Through Finland in Carts Part 37

The mist disappeared as the sun rose, and the birds began to sing gaily as we skipped and jumped over the seething waters, till at last we saw before us a solid wall of high steep rock, rising perpendicularly seventy or eighty feet from the water. Our steersman made straight for its hard cold base, round which whirled a roaring cataract. Surely this time death stared us in the face. Had he gone to sleep or lost his senses, or was he paralysed with fatigue?

On, on, on we went; we glanced round anxiously to see what had happened to the man. He sat motionless, his eyes staring wildly before him, looking hardly human. Our hearts seemed positively to stand still as the boat's bow got within eight or nine feet of that ma.s.sive wall, going straight for it, at a pace no one could believe who has not visited the spot and felt the horror of it.

We seemed on the very brink of eternity, gazing into the unknown, and as the drowning man reviews his whole life in a second, we in like manner saw our past, and peered into the future.

Our paralysing fear was fleeting; another moment and our boat's head flew to the left, our craft quivered all over, and then head first down the rapid she plunged into the swirling pool, with a feeling as if she were going up on the other side of the dancing waves.

The danger was past, and our steersman's recently grim face a.s.sumed a look of happy content.

This rock, be it explained, is the most dangerous point between Russia and the Gulf of Bothnia; many and many a tar-boat has been shattered and lives lost at this spot, as it stands at a corner of a sharp turn of the cataract, and a regular whirlpool is always seething at its base--the water forming a fall of two or three feet--swirling round and going up again like a sort of wave. There is only one possible way to pa.s.s in safety, and that is to take the boat right up to the rock and turn, when almost too late, with such dexterity that the boat descends on the falling wave at so wild a pace that she crosses the whirlpool too quickly to be sucked under, and then bounds away safely on the opposite breaker.

It was horrible--but it was grand.

We sat still and silent.

CHAPTER XIX

SALMON--ULEBORG

To say we were tired hardly describes the situation. We were absolutely exhausted. So exhausted, in fact, were we, after our late experiences, that when--twenty-eight hours after leaving _Kajana_, twenty-eight hours of constant strain--we got into the little steamer at _Muhos_ which was to convey us the last part of our journey to _Uleborg_, we were literally worn out. This steamer plied to and fro on a wide stretch of the famous _Ule_ river, where the stream was quick and yet not a cataract. It was only a little vessel, without a cabin of any kind, and with hard uninviting wooden benches running along its stern end for the accommodation of pa.s.sengers. We went on board before she started, and, feeling that we at last had a chance to rest, lay down all six speechless on the floor or the benches of the little boat, our heads supported merely by a rug or a travelling bag, and apparently fell asleep at once, for when we woke it was to find that a dozen peasants had a.s.sembled on board, all of whom were eagerly discussing us and staring at the sight of six exhausted strangers, whom report told them had descended the famous rapids the previous night with considerable danger. Even that short sleep refreshed us somewhat, and, but for the discomforts we had brought away with us from the hideous little gray house, we might have dreamed on for hours.

Oh, how glad we felt as our little droschkies drew up in front of the grand-looking stone hotel at _Uleborg_, which proved as uncomfortable inside as it was magnificent in appearance outside.

Having secured our rooms, out we all sailed with our little bundles of clean clothes packed under our arms, and as quickly as possible made our way to the public bath-houses, feeling that it would require all the bath-women in Finland to make us clean again.

If ever self-control in this world had been required, it had been called upon when we endeavoured, during the last hours of that horrible journey, to sit still and smile, and try and look comfortable.

Lapland! When we had talked of Lapland, kind friends had looked surprised, and in subdued tones and hushed whispers asked us if we knew what Lapland in the summer meant?

"There are many inhabitants in a Lap's hut," they said, "and although in the winter such things are kept in subjection by the cold, we should never dream of crossing over the border into Lapland in the summer time."

We had laughed their fears to scorn, and remained determined to pursue our way towards the Tundras and the land of the Samoyads, but our friends were right and we were wrong. Now, after our recent experiences, we decided, with one accord, that wild horses and millions of golden pounds could not drag us through Lapland in summer, knowing the sort of horrors we should have to encounter, and which we had already endured to such an extent that we felt degraded, mentally, morally, and physically.

A mosquito bite is perhaps the most hurtful of all. There is poison in it, and that means pain; but these other things, although not so harmful, are so loathsomely filthy that one feels ashamed to be one's self, and to hate one's own very existence.

Surely there can be no inhabited house duty in Finland, or the State would indeed be rich.

The _Uleborg_ salmon is among the most famous in the world. Seeing the fish caught is very interesting, especially when the _take_ happens to be about two hundred. The _Ule_ river is wide, and for a hundred or more miles up its course are the famous rapids, which we had been fortunate enough to descend alive, as described in the last chapter. How the salmon manage to swim against such a force of water must ever remain a marvel; but they do, and the fishing near _Waala_ and various other stretches is excellent. In the winter months all but the waterfalls--and even some of them--are frozen solid; it is during these spells of cold that trees are thrown on to the ice to be conveyed, free of charge, to _Uleborg_ on the rushing waters of spring. Not dozens, but thousands and tens of thousands of trees are carried by such means down to the coast. This goes on until the 10th of June, and, therefore, it is not until then that the salmon piers, with their nets, can be put up.

Accordingly, every year on that day in June sixty men start work at _Uleborg_, and in eight days erect two barriers, about three hundred yards apart, each crossing the entire stream, except for one spot left clear for the boats to pa.s.s through. These piers are very simple, and one wonders that such fragile erections can withstand the immense rush. Wooden staves are driven into the ground with great difficulty, planks are laid upon them, and then large stones are piled up which keep all steady, the whole thing being bound together by rope made of birch-tree branches.

On either side of the barrier are the nets, perhaps a hundred altogether, or twenty-five a side on each of the pier erections. They resemble nets on the Thames or anywhere else, except that they are much larger, being intended to catch big fish.

We were so fascinated the first time we went to see the salmon caught, that we returned the second day to watch the performance again. We little dreamed that our curiosity in their fishing was exciting equal interest in the _Uleborg_ folk. Such, however, was the case, as a notice afterwards appeared in the paper to say that the English women had been twice to look at the salmon-catching, had appeared much interested in what they saw, and had asked many questions. It was a good thing we were not up to any mischief, as the Finnish press was so fond of chronicling all our doings.

At five o'clock every morning and evening, the nets are lifted, and, as a rule, about a hundred fish are taken each time, although we were fortunate enough to see a catch of nearly twice that number. Some of them were little--weighing only two or three pounds--but the average appeared to be about twenty pounds, while one or two of the salmon turned the scale at forty.

About a dozen men a.s.sembled on the bank, all smoking their everlasting pipes, some who had been lying asleep on the gra.s.s being roused from their slumbers, for it was five in the afternoon and time for them to start on their "catch." Each wooden pier was to be tackled by half a dozen men in a tar-boat, and, as we were particularly anxious to see this done, I persuaded one of the men to let me join his party, which he only allowed me to do after I had faithfully promised to sit perfectly still. I have described what c.o.c.kly things these tar-boats are, even filled with their barrels or luggage for ballast, but when perfectly empty, as they always are when they go to fetch the salmon except for the weight of half a dozen men, it is a perfect marvel they do not upset. They are not so long, however, as those used for the rapids, although they are pointed the same at both ends, and the planks are equally wide and thin and as quaintly tied together. Off I went to the farthest end of one of these long wooden vessels; the boat was punted to the desired spot, the water apparently not being very deep at that point, and, having brought their craft up sideways against the wooden erection with its nets, the men who had run along the top of the pier--a somewhat dangerous proceeding--drew the net sluices up one by one so that the men in our boat might get at the salmon, while one of her crew, with a long stick and a hook at the end, pulled the net from the bed of the river. It was most awfully exciting; sometimes the meshes would come up with half a dozen fish in them, sometimes disappointment awaited the fishermen, for they got nothing. But what struck me as particularly strange was the fact that half the salmon were dead and half were alive; apparently the dead ones had been in the net some hours (more than twelve was impossible as the nets had been taken up at five A.M.). Two or three hours' captivity, however, with such a tremendous weight of water pa.s.sing over them was enough to knock the life out of any fish. It was a trying moment when a monster salmon, struggling frantically, was pulled half into our boat; but the men cleverly speared them or knocked them on the head with a large mallet, which killed them instantly. Ere half an hour elapsed we had emptied all the nets along our pier, and with the boat well filled with beautiful shining fish, we returned to the little landing-stage from which we originally started.

As those fish--nearly two hundred in number--lay on that small wooden pier they made a mighty show, and it seemed wonderful to consider that seventy or eighty salmon had been taken at the same spot only a few hours previously, while one hundred and twenty-five miles farther up the river something between fifty and a hundred are netted daily.

Everything was managed in the most business-like fashion, and with great cleanliness. Two men, one on either side of the pier, sat on tubs turned upside down and, each with a knife in his hand, proceeded to clean the fish. They cut its throat, and, with the most marvellous rapidity, cleansed it, the mysteries from the interior being put aside for sale to the poor; then another man came forward and, picking up the fish thus prepared, washed it most carefully in the stream. In a very short s.p.a.ce of time the whole catch of salmon were lying cleaned and washed upon the dripping pier. They were then put on trucks or wheelbarrows and rolled up to the ice-house. Here all the fish were accurately weighed, the number of kilos. being entered in a ledger, and, after sorting out the large from the small, they were packed into ice in enormous wooden tubs, and within a couple of hours most of them were on their way to St.

Petersburg.

The net fishing ends during the last days of August, when the nets and the piers have to be taken away and packed up carefully for the following summer's use.

It was at this salmon ground that my sister and I were much amused at two little incidents.

We were sitting on a wooden bench, waiting till all should be ready, when one of the fishermen came and stood before us. He was smoking and his hands were in his pockets as he paused within a few feet of us in a most leisurely manner. He did not do so rudely, although perhaps somewhat awkwardly. As he was evidently a Finlander we felt unable to converse with the gentleman, and therefore merely smiled.

"You speak English?" he said in that language.

"Certainly," we replied, somewhat taken aback.

"So do I," he rejoined.

As he was a poor-looking person, with tattered clothing and a Finnish countenance, we were somewhat amazed, and we asked if he were a Scotchman, that type more closely resembling the Finn than the Saxon race.

"No," he replied, "I am a Finn, but was a sailor for years, and I have been over to America as an emigrant."

"You speak English wonderfully well," we answered, really surprised at the purity of the man's accent.

"Yes," he said, "I was several years in America, where I lost all the money I had made at sea. It took me a long time to collect enough to come home again, but I have just come back, and if not richer, anyway I hope I'm wiser." And he thereupon began to explain the advantages and disadvantages of emigration.

Imagine in the far North, almost on the borders of Lapland, being addressed in our own tongue by a man in rags. We were astonished; yet all over Finland one meets with sailors who speak the King's English, and in _Uleborg_ we were struck with the fact on two other occasions--the first being when the man at the helm of a small penny steamer addressed us, and the second when a blue-coated policeman entered into conversation.

This shows how universal our clumsy grammarless language is becoming.

But still, although English is the language of commerce, and with English one can travel all over the world, better than with any other tongue, the only way really to enjoy and appreciate voyaging in foreign lands is either to speak the language of the people, or, if that cannot be managed, to have some one always at hand capable and willing to translate.

Knowledge of the language of a country is a golden key to enjoyment.

As we left the salmon ground a lady, who had apparently been watching the proceedings from afar, desiring to know more of such strange beings as the "two English ladies," advanced, and, on the trifling pretext of asking if we had lost our way, addressed us in excellent French.

We thanked her, and replied we had been for several days in _Uleborg_ and knew our way quite well; but she was not to be baffled--she came to have a talk and she meant to have it--therefore she walked beside us the whole way back to the hotel, giving us little bits of information, though much more inclined to ask us questions than to answer those to which we were really in need of replies.

Will any one deny that the Finlander is inquisitive? Perhaps the reader will be inquisitive too when he learns that unintentionally we made a match. Nevertheless, the statement is quite true. We, most innocent and unoffending--we, who abhor interference in all matrimonial affairs--we, without design or intent, made a match.

It came about in this way.

By mere chance I chaperoned a charming and delightful girl down the Gulf of Bothnia. Her coming with us was only decided upon during the last five minutes of our stay, and her clothes were positively repacked on the platform of the station to enable her to do so at all.

We had been given introductions to a delightful Baron at one of the towns _en route_ to _Hango_, and having arrived at our destination, and not being masters of the language, we asked our maiden fair to kindly telephone in her own language and acquaint the Baron with the fact of our arrival. She did so; they were strangers, and each heard the other's dulcet tones for the first time through the mechanical mysteries of the telephone. The Baron joined us an hour later, he invited us to dinner, he escorted us about, he drove us to a park, he sat beside us in the evening while we drank coffee and admired the view. He came to see us off the following day, he gave us books and flowers as a parting gift, and we left.

Pangs of remorse fill my soul as I write these lines. For the twenty-four hours we remained in that town I monopolised this delightful Baron. I plied him with questions, I insisted on his showing me everything there was to be seen of interest, and telling me many things I wished to know about his country, and, with regret, truth compels me to repeat, that, so dense were my powers of perception, I monopolised him almost entirely, while he must have been longing to be alone with the girl he had fallen in love with at first sight--or at first hearing.

We left Finland shortly after this, but had hardly reached our native sh.o.r.e before a letter from the charming girl arrived, in which she said, "Fancy, the Baron turned up here the other day, and the day after his arrival he proposed, I accepted him, and we shall be married by the end of the month."