wealth, the resource, and the
refined taste of the nation and its rulers.

_FINLAND_

_HARRY DE WINDT_

"What sort of a place is Finland?" asked a friend whom I met, on
my return from that country, in London. "Very much the same as
Lapland, I suppose? Snow, sleighs, and bears, and all that kind
of thing?"

My friend was not singular in his idea, for they are probably those
of most people in England. At present Finland is a _terra incognita_,
though fortunately not likely to remain one. Nevertheless, it will
probably take years to eradicate a notion that one of the most
attractive and advanced countries in Europe, possessed in summer
of the finest climate in the world, is not the eternal abode of
poverty, cold, and darkness. It was just the same before the railway
opened up Siberia and revealed prosperous cities, fertile plains,
and boundless mineral resources to an astonished world. A decade
ago my return from this land of civilization, progress, and, above
all, humanity was invariably met by the kind of question that heads
this chapter, with the addition, as a rule, of facetious allusions
to torture and the knout! My ignorance, however, of Finland as
she really is was probably unsurpassed before my eyes were opened
by a personal inspection, so I cannot afford to criticise.

What is Finland, and what are its geographical and climatic
characteristics? I will try to answer these questions briefly and
clearly without wearying the reader with statistics. In the first
place, Finland (in Finnish, "Suomi") is about the size of Great
Britain, Holland, and Belgium combined, with a population of about
2,500,000. Its southern and western shores are washed by the Baltic
Sea, while Lake Ladoga and the Russian frontier form the eastern
boundary. Finland stretches northward far beyond the head of the
Gulf of Bothnia, where it joins Norwegian territory. There are
thirty-seven towns, of which only seven have a population exceeding
10,000, viz., Helsingfors, Abo, Tammerfors, Viborg, Uleaborg, Vasa
(Nikolaistad), and Bjorneborg.

Finland is essentially a flat country, slightly mountainous towards
the north, but even her highest peak (Haldesjock, in Finnish Lapland)
is under 4,000 feet in height. South of this a hill of 300 feet
is called a mountain; therefore Alpine climbers have no business
here. The interior may be described as an undulating plateau largely
composed of swamp and forest, broken with granite rocks and grave