Leidi New Yorkista ei ollut erityisen ihastunut matkustamiseen suurella rantatiellä Turun ja Pietarin välissä syyskuussa 1838.
It was well for us that we had made a good provision of table necessaries before leaving Stockholm, for very little was to be obtained, either from the Polish Jew innkeepers, or the worst supplied markets of Finish towns.
An unpleasant ride of seventy miles the first day brought us to a gray wooden town, called Bjersby. In the course of the day we crossed several navigable rivers coming from the north, and wound our tedious way round the head of several deep inlets of the sea. The peasantry were then, on the 21st day of September, busy in their grain harvest.
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| Björsby Pohjan länsipuolella 1935 kartassa. Vanhatkartat.fi |
The second day, after another uninteresting ride, without seeing either town or village, we arrived at Helsingfors, the Gibraltar of the Baltic. On an island near the coast is an immense fortification, perfectly impregnable; and when the Russians conquered Finland from the Swedes, it was betrayed into their hands by the treacherus commandant. In the roads, we saw riding at anchor four fine Russian frigates. With the exception of a large College, the place is entirely military.
I will not trouble you with the whole detail of our six tedious and fatiguing days' ride through rough and rocky Finland. Had not the roads been some of the best in the world, (owing to their being strewed with the fine abrasions from the granite rocks under the action of intense frosts,) it would have been too intolerable to endure. Besides, as another relief, the horses were excellent, and the people kind and obliging.
Rahvas muistutti intiaaneja.
We saw numerous little bands of Finlapper from the interior "come down to salt," and revelling by the sea side, like a tribe of our Indians, on the luscious productions of the briny waters. They were all of extremely small stature, and thick set, with exceedingly dull and stolid countenances. They wore their great bushy hair down to their eyes, and over their shoulders, like the tags of a mop, and cut as square off at the ends.
Myös jäkälä ja Pyterlahden kaivos kiinnostivat.
The ground and rocks in the forest were entirely covered with a singular species of tall white moss of a heautiful texture, the same, no doubt, as that on which the reindeer subsist in winter a little further north. I gathered some pretty specimens, which I shall send home. We saw where the Russian Government were quarrving cut some immense granite columns for the new Cathedral, now being erected in St. Petersburg.
(Pyterlahden kaivoksesta on samalta ajalta kuvia: tässä)
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