xperienced the same degree of cold. Both of
them had their noses severely frozen. We were two hours and a half in
travelling to the first station, seven miles, as the snow was falling in
blinding quantities, and the road was not yet ploughed out. All the
pedestrians we met were on runners, but even with their snow skates,
five feet long, they sank deep enough to make their progress very slow
and toilsome.

By the time we reached Nasby my face was very much swollen and inflamed,
and as it was impossible to make the next stage by daylight, we wisely
determined to stop there. The wind blew a hurricane, the hard
snow-crystals lashed the windows and made a gray chaos of all
out-of-doors, but we had a warm, cosy, carpeted room within, a capital
dinner in the afternoon, and a bottle of genuine London porter with our
evening pipe. So we passed the last day of A. D. 1856, grateful to God
for all the blessings which the year had brought us, and for the comfort
and shelter we enjoyed, in that Polar wilderness of storm and snow.

On New Year's morning it blew less, and the temperature was
comparatively mild, so, although the road was very heavy, we started
again. Nasby is the last Swedish station, the Finnish frontier, which is
an abrupt separation of races and tongues, being at the north-western
corner of the Bothnian Gulf. In spite of the constant intercourse which
now exists between Norrland and the narrow strip of Finnish soil which
remains to Sweden, there has been no perceptible assimilation of the two
races. At Nasby, all is pure Swedish; at Sangis, twelve miles distant,
everything is Finnish. The blue eyes and fair hair, the lengthened oval
of the face, and slim, straight form disappear. You see, instead, square
faces, dark eyes, low foreheads, and something of an Oriental fire and
warmth in the movements. The language is totally dissimilar, and even
the costume, though of the same general fashion, presents many
noticeable points of difference. The women wear handkerchiefs of some
bright color bound over the forehead and under the chin, very similar to
those worn by the Armenian women in Asia Minor. On first coming among
them, the Finns impressed me as a less frank and open hearted, but more
original and picturesque, race than the Swedes. It is exceedingly
curious and interesting to find such a flavour of the Orient on the
borders of the Frigid Zone.

The roads were very bad, and our drivers and horses provokingly slow,