y cushion, and, baring my head to the pleasant sea-breeze, quietly
enjoyed the scene. Perhaps this very seat was the throne of an old
viking! Here were sea-shells, and glittering pebbles, and tufts of
moss for his crown; and here were sea-gulls to make music for him, and
the spray from the wild waves to keep him cool; and a thousand
rock-bound islands, lying outspread to the north, with grottoes in
them for his ships; and piles upon piles of rocky palaces all around,
covered with golden roofs of moss; and every thing, in short, that
could make glad the heart of a grim old viking residing on the edge of
the arctic circle. And if this summer scene, with its blue sea, and
wood-capped islands, and warm sun, and balmy breeze, could not make
glad his heart, it would not be difficult to imagine what changes
winter could bring over it, and how the old viking, sitting on his
throne by the sea-shore, could enjoy the dead and icy waste before
him; and how the winter drifts would whistle through his hair; and how
cheery the jagged rocks would look peeping up out of the snow-drifts;
and how balmy would be the night-air at sixty degrees below
freezing-point; and how the old viking would shake his beard with
laughter as he warmed his hands in a midday sun, only ten feet above
the horizon, and make the icicles rattle on his chin; and sit thus
laughing and blowing his fingers, and rattling his icy beard, and
saying to himself, "What a blessing to be a Finlander! How horribly
the natives of Spain and Italy must suffer from bad climate! What a
pity it is Finland is not large enough to accommodate the whole human
race." With such thoughts as these I amused myself for some time,
soothed and charmed by the pleasant sea-breeze and the music of the
waves upon the rocks. The air was deliciously pure, and the odor of
the sea-weeds had something in it so healthful and inspiring that I
was insensibly carried back to by-gone days. How short a time it
seemed since I was a wanderer upon the rock-bound shores of Juan
Fernandez, yet how many strange scenes I had passed through since
then--how much of the world I had seen, with its toils, and troubles,
and vicissitudes! Here I was now, after years of travel in every
clime, among the various nations of the earth, sitting solitary and
alone upon an isolated rock on the shores of Finland! Whither was I
going? What was the object? Where was the result? When was it to end?
Years were creeping over me; I was n