Amerikkalaisen matkahuomioita kesältä 1888

Kesällä 1888 Suomessa matkannut amerikkalainen Carter Henry Harrison Harrison kuvailee kirjassaan A race with the sun, or, A sixteen months' tour from Chicago around the world: through Manitoba and British Columbia by the Canadian Pacific, Oregon, and Washington, Japan, China, Siam, Straits Settlements, Burmah, India, Ceylon, Egypt, Greece, Turkey, Roumania, Hungary, Austria, Poland, Transcaucasia, the Caspian Sea and the Volga River, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Prussia, Paris, London and home (1889) seuraavasti

... selviämistään kielitaidottomana ja suomalaisten lukutaitoisuutta

Speaking not a word of their language, we have been forced to decided freedoms in making our wants known. We marched into their kitchens, into their dairies, and into their store-rooms to point out what we wished. They invariably seemed amused and never annoyed at this lack of form on our part. Our guide-book has a short lexicon. We occasionally find a word for the thing we wish, and instead of trying to pronounce it we point it out in the book, and, to credit of the people, we have only found two or three old people who could not read. I learn it is the boast that every one can read the Bible who was not too old to go to school within the past 15 or 20 years, and nearly all write and can cipher.

... kyyti"miehiä" ja kulkukoiria

At some stations we found no men. The women then brought out the cart, went to the field for the horse, and hitched them up, and were our post-boys, but generally we had bright little fellows from 10 to 12 years old, and a few times little girls.

Our post-boys invariably carry three or four rings of bread and some hay in the cart to feed their horses at the end of the stage before going back.

We had always beautifully curled tailed dogs to keep us company. One stayed with us 48 miles, although we changed four or five times our post-boys. He had the most independently double-curled tail I ever saw. He was evidently well known at the different stations.

... majoitustiloja

The travellers' rooms at the post-houses were delightfully clean, - one or two with strips of carpet, others strewn with sweet fir-twigs. The little tow-headed children were good-natured, and two or three pet hogs invariably grunted under our windows, with a gentle squeal for a crust. The hogs were always clean, and really not bad pets. 

... ruokaa (clabber on itselleni uusi sana, tarkoittanee viiliä.)

The milk is delicious, and the butter unsurpassed. We have luxuriated on clabber, one of God's best gifts to man. [...] At the farm-house or post-stations, where we spent the nights, we had good beds, a supper on bacon and raw fish, rye bread, and Swedish hard bread (delicious), and as delightful milk, cream, butter, and clabber as one ever ate, and in addition to these, very good coffee and sometimes eggs for breakfast.

sekä miesten ja lasten hiuksia.

The men have tawny-colored hair, and, like the Russians, cut it rather squarely around the nape of the neck, but their hair being thin, this manner of cutting does not give them the uncouth look of Russians. [...] Finnish children have heads so flaxen that it amuses one. No flax is so severely white. Their little faces, and the skin under their hair looks brown in comparison with the tow.

Hilkka Finnen piirtämä kuva kirjasta Kylän lapset (1880).