of the frontier, going
and coming, than it was at Tornea on the Finnish side, although there
we were honoured guests of the country with special arrangements made
on our behalf. One could not but be impressed by the unmistakable
signs of wealth in Stockholm, where hospitality was being exercised on
the most lavish scale at the leading restaurants and at the palatial
Grand Hotel--no bad place to stop at when you are travelling on
Government service and can send in the bill. The good Swedes (who,
like most other people, have an eye for the main chance) were making
money freely out of both sides in the great contest, although they
were always protesting against our blockading measures.

Travelling is particularly comfortable alike in Norway and in Sweden,
for the sleeping-cars are beyond reproach; owing to snowfalls, the
time-table is, however, a little uncertain during the winter months.
With their eternal pine-woods, Sweden and Finland are dismal enough
regions to traverse in the cold season of the year, although on the
Swedish side the line crosses a succession of uplands divided by deep
valleys, which are probably very picturesque after the melting of the
snows. It was noticeable that all the important viaducts in Sweden
were protected by elaborate zeribas of wire entanglement although the
country was neutral, a form of defensive measure which was much less
noticeable in England and Russia although they were belligerents.
Haparanda is close to the Arctic circle, and there the Lapps were very
much _en evidence_, forming apparently the bulk of the population--the
children astonishingly sturdy creatures, maybe owing to the amount of
clothes that they had on. Lapps did all the heavy work in the way of
sleigh-driving, porterage at the station, and so on; nor did they
manifest much disposition to depreciate the value of their services
when it came to the paying stage.

To the traveller without special credentials, the short journey from
Haparanda to the railway-car at Tornea which is to bear him onwards
must have been almost a foretaste of the Valley of the Shadow of
Death. Even for the members of a military mission with "red
passports," whose advent had been announced, it was one prolonged
agony; and it would probably have been even worse when the intervening
estuaries were not frozen over and when one had to take the ferry. All
the formalities had to be gone through twice over because there was an
island, although the R