ersburg to be seen on coming by steamer from the Gulf of
Finland. When the Cathedral was built, it cost more than two and
three-quarter million pounds. It was finished fifty years ago, but has
never been in really sound condition, and is always undergoing extensive
repairs.

* * * * *

The last stage of our journey is now at hand. One evening we drive in a
_troika_, with much ringing of sleigh bells, to the station of the
Finland Railway, whence the train takes us through Viborg to Abo, the
old capital of Finland. Here a steamer is waiting to take us over to
Stockholm, which was the starting-point of our long journey.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] A seaport of New Hampshire, U.S.A.

[20] A Russian alcoholic liquor usually made from rye.

PART II

I

STOCKHOLM TO EGYPT

TO LONDON AND PARIS

Again we set out from Stockholm in the evening by train, and the next
morning we reach Malmoe, a port on the west coast of Sweden, not many
miles north of Trelleborg, from which we started on our journey
eastwards across Asia. From Malmoe a steamer soon takes us across the
narrow sound to Copenhagen, the beautiful capital of Denmark, and then
we take the train across the large, rich, and fertile island of Zealand.
There farms are crowded close together among the tilled fields; there
thriving cattle graze on the meadows, yielding Denmark a superfluity of
milk and butter; there the productive soil spreads everywhere, leaving
no room for unprofitable sandy downs and heaths, as on the west coast of
Jutland. The Danes are a small people, but they make a brave struggle
for existence. Their country is one of the smallest in Europe, but the
first in utilising all its possibilities of opening profitable commerce
with foreign lands. Much larger are its possessions in the Arctic Ocean,
Greenland, and Iceland, but there the population is very scanty and the
real masters of the islands are cold and ice.

At Korsoer, on the Great Belt, we again go on board a steamer which in a
few hours takes us between Langeland and Laaland to Kiel, the principal
naval port of Germany. Here we are on soil which was formerly Danish,
for it was only during her last unfortunate war that Denmark lost the
two duchies of Schleswig and Holstein.

We travel by train from Kiel through fertile Holstein southwards to the
free Hansa town of Hamburg on the Elbe, the greatest commercial emporium
on the mainland of Europe, and, af