ee feet occurring in a
period of a hundred and eighteen years.

We took passage on a neat little steamer of about four hundred tons
which plies regularly between the capitals of Sweden and Russia,
stopping on the way at Abo and Helsingfors, a distance in all of
about six hundred miles. By this route, after crossing the open sea,
one passes through an almost endless labyrinth of picturesque islands
in the Gulf of Finland, including the archipelago known as the Aland
Isles, besides many isolated ones quite near to the coast of Finland.
This forms a most delightful sail, the waters being nearly always
smooth, except during a few hours of necessary exposure in the open
Gulf. The islands are generally covered with a variety of trees and
attractive verdure, many of them being also improved for the purpose
of small farms, embracing appropriate clusters of buildings, about
which were grouped domestic cattle and bevies of merry children,
making memorable pictures as we wound in and out among them pursuing
the course of the channel. The great contrast between these low-lying
verdant islands and those lofty, frowning, jagged, and snow-capped
ones which we had so lately encountered in the far North was striking
indeed. By and by we enter the fjord which leads up to Abo from the
Gulf, which is also dotted here and there by the most beautiful,
garden-like islands imaginable, and upon which are built many pretty
chalets, forming the summer homes of the citizens of Finmark's former
capital. It would be difficult to name a trip of a mingled
sea-and-land character so thoroughly delightful; it constantly and
vividly recalled the thousand islands of the St. Lawrence in North
America, and the Inland Sea of Japan. The town of Abo has a
population of about twenty-five thousand, who are mostly of Swedish
descent. It is thrifty, cleanly, and wears an aspect of quiet
prosperity. The place is venerable in years, and has a record
reaching back for over seven centuries. Here the Russian flag--red,
blue, and white--first begins to greet one from all appropriate
points, and more especially from the shipping; but we almost
unconsciously pass from one nationality to another where the dividing
lines are of so mingled a character. The most prominent building to
catch the stranger's eye on entering the harbor is the long
barrack-like prison upon a hillside. In front of us loomed up the
famous old castle of Abo, awkward and irregular in shape, and snow
w