s of sounding-line off Gibraltar will not reach the
bottom, and two thousand fathoms fail to find it a few miles east of
Malta. The greatest depth of the Baltic, on the contrary, is only a
hundred and fifty fathoms.

It is a curious, though not unfamiliar fact, that the Baltic, or rather
the bottom of the basin in which it lies, is rich in amber, which the
agitated waters cast upon the shores in large quantities annually,--a
process which has been going on for three or four centuries. We all know
that amber is a hardened fossil resin produced by an extinct species of
pine; so that it is evident that where these waters now ebb and flow
there were once flourishing forests of amber-producing pines. These were
doubtless gradually submerged by the encroachment of the sea, or
suddenly engulfed by some grand volcanic action of nature. Pieces of the
bark and of the cones of the pine-trees are often found adhering to the
amber, and insects of a kind unknown to our day are also found embedded
in it. The largest piece of amber extant is preserved in the British
Museum in London, and is about the size of a year-old infant's head.

It is known that the peninsula of Scandinavia is gradually becoming
elevated above the surrounding waters at the north, and depressed in an
equal ratio in the extreme south,--a fact of great interest to
geologists. The total change in the level has been carefully observed
and recorded by scientific commissions, the aggregate certified to being
a trifle over three feet, brought about in a period of a hundred and
eighteen years.

We take passage on a coasting steamer which plies between Stockholm and
St. Petersburg by way of Abo and Helsingfors, a distance of about six
hundred miles. By this route, after crossing the open sea we pass
through an almost endless labyrinth of beautiful islands in the Gulf of
Finland, including the archipelago, known as the Aland Islands, besides
many isolated ones quite near the Finnish coast. This forms a delightful
sail, the passage being almost always smooth, except during a few hours
of exposure in the open Gulf. By and by we enter the fjord which leads
up to Abo, which is also dotted here and there by charming garden-like
islands, upon which are built many pretty cottages, forming the summer
homes of the citizens of Finmark's former capital.

The town of Abo has a population of about twenty-five thousand, who are
mostly of Swedish descent. It is thrifty, cleanly, and we