to cut him in pieces. The animal, at last wearied out by the constancy of the man, and disheartened by the obstacles continually op posed to his flight, would stop; then we were enabled to get again into our sledges, but not till the driver had blindfolded the animal's eyes: but one time, one of the wildest and most spirited of all the horses in our train, having taken fright, completely made his escape. The peasant who conducted him, unable any longer to endure the fatigue and pain of being dragged through the ice, let go his hold of the bridle. The horse relieved from this weight, and feeling himself at perfect liberty, redoubled his speed, and surmounted every impediment. The sledge, which he made to dance in the air, by alarming his fears, added new wings to his flight. When he had fled to a considerable distance from us, he appeared from time to time as a dark spot which continued to diminish in the air, and at last totally vanished from our sight. Then it was that we recognised the prudence of having in our party some spare horses, and we were fully sensible of the danger that must attend a journey across the Gulf of Bothnia without such a precaution. The peasant, who was the owner of the fugitive, taking one of the sledges, went in search of him, trying to find him again by following the traces of his flight. As for ourselves, we made the best of our way to the isles of Aland, keeping as nearly as we could in the middle of the same plain, still being repeatedly overturned, and always in danger of losing one or other of our horses; which would have occasioned a very serious embarrassment. During the whole of this journey we did not meet with, on the ice, so much as one man, beast, bird, or any living creature. Those vast solitudes present a desert abandoned as it were by nature. The dead silence that reigns is interrupted only by the whistling of the winds against the prominent points of ice, and sometimes by the loud crackings occasioned by their being irresistibly torn from this frozen expanse; pieces thus forcibly broken off are frequently blown to a considerable distance. Through the rents produced by these ruptures, you may see below the watery abyss; and it is sometimes necessary to lay planks across them, by way of bridges, for the sledges to pass over.' Vol. i. P. 184.

The islands of Aland are healthy and well peopled. The cold is said to have increased during the late years: in 1546 it was remarked, as a singular occurrence, that the sea was frozen over. The Alanders are good seamen, and represented, on the whole, as ingenious, active, and courteous. Their lives are regular, and they are far from superstitious: they are accused, however, of being litigious. The animals of Aland are numerous, but not uncommon. Their Flora contains 680 plants. The rock is red granite.

Our author now advances to Finland; and as the summer was approaching, traveling was, after some weeks, less easy. The roads were muddy and often impassable; but the rivers were of course open, and relieved the unavoidable fatigue which must have been otherwise incurred. Mr. Acerbi, we have said, landed at Abo, which is a town of some importance in a commercial view, is

the see of a bishop, and boasts of a university of considerable credit. In 1791 it contained 8504 inhabitants. From Abo to Yervenkyle, the country is flat and uninteresting; but the interior of a Finland peasant's hut offers a picture not very common.

The houses of the peasants are well built, and the stranger finds every where lodging and beds; and he may be tolerably accommo dated, if he have the precaution to carry some conveniences along with him. You are received with great hospitality; the peasant furnishes you with whatever he has got to eat, though, in general, he can only offer you fresh and curdled milk, salt herrings, and perhaps, as before mentioned, a little salt meat. In comparison with those who travel among them they are poor, but in relation to themselves they are rich, since they are supplied with every thing that constitutes, in their opinion, good living. If they have more money than they have immediate use for, they lay it up for some unforeseen emergency, or convert it into a vase, or some other domestic utensil. You must not be surprised in Finland, if in a small wooden house, where you can get nothing but herrings and milk, they should bring you water in a silver vessel of the value of fifty or sixty rix-dollars. The women are warmly clad; above their clothes they wear a linen shift, which gives them the air of being in a sort of undress, and produces an odd though not disagreeable fancy. The inside of the house is always warm, and indeed too much so for one who comes out of the external air, and is not accustomed to that temperature. The peasants remain in the house constantly in their shirt sleeves, without a coat, and with but a single waistcoat; they frequently go abroad in the same dress, without dread either of rheumatism or fever. We shall see the reason of this when we come to speak of their baths. The Finlanders, who accompany travellers behind their sledges, are generally dressed in a kind of short coat made of a calf's-skin, or in a woollen shirt, fastened round the middle with a girdle. They pull over their boots coarse woollen stockings, which have the double advantage of keeping them warm, and preventing them from slipping on the ice.

The interior of the peasant's house presents a picture of considerable interest. The women are occupied in teasing or spinning wool for their clothing, the men in cutting faggots, making nets, and mending or constructing their sledges.' Vol. i. P. 218.

The dreary prospect was enlivened by a beautiful Aurora Borealis, which emulated, in the brilliance of its tints, an Italian sun at the period of setting. The cold, however, at the end of March was 13° of Celsius-about 9° of Fahrenheit. The description of the cataract in the neighbourhood of Yervenkyle deserves particular notice.

It is formed by the river Kyro, which, issuing from a lake of the same name, precipitates itself through some steep and rugged racks, and falls, so far as I could guess, from a height of about seventy yards. The water dashing from rock to rock, boils and foams till it reaches the bottom, where it pursues a more tranquil course, and after making a large circuit loses itself again between mountainous banks,

which are covered with fir-trees. That we might have a more com manding view of the picture, we took our station on a high ground, from which we had a distant prospect of a large tract of country of a varied surface, and almost wholly covered with woods of firs, the pleasing verdure of which acquiring additional lustre from the solar rays, formed an agreeable contrast with the snow and masses of ice hanging from the margin over the cascade.

The fall presented us with one of those appearances which we desired much to see, as being peculiar to the regions of the north, and which are never to be met with in Italy. The water, throwing itself amidst enormous masses of ice, which here and there have the aspect of gloomy vaults, fringed with curious crystallizations, and the cold being of such rigour as almost to freeze the agitated waves and vapours in the air, had formed gradually two bridges of ice across the cascade of such solidity and strength, that men passed over them in perfect security. The waves raging and foaming below with a vast noise, were in a state of such violent motion as to spout water now and then on the top of the bridge; a circumstance which rendered its surface so exceedingly slippery, that the peasants were obliged to pass it creeping on their hands and knees.' Vol. i. P. 222.

In general, provisions are cheap in Finland, and the peasantry apparently in comfortable circumstances. They excel in firing with the rifle-gun, and strike the object with exact precision. A singular feature in a Finland forest is the appearance of conflagrations. These may be the effects of accidents; but as they happen very generally in the crown forests, and as the peasants are allowed to use the timber that has been injured by fire, we may reasonably suppose that the flames are not always accidental. The effects of these fires and of the whirlwinds, are well described.

I saw in this forest the disastrous wreck of one of those conflagrations, which had devoured the wood through an extent of six or seven miles, and which exhibited a most dismal spectacle. You not only saw trunks and large remains of trees lying in confusion on the ground, and reduced to the state of charcoal, but also trees standing upright, which, though they had escaped destruction, had yet been miserably scorched; others, black and bending down to one side, whilst in the midst of the ruins of trunk and branches appeared a group of young trees, rising to replace the former generation; and, full of vigour and vegetable life, seemed to be deriving their nourishment from the ashes of their parents.

The devastations occasioned by storms in the midst of those forests is still more impressive, and presents a picture still more diversified and majestic. It seems wholly inconceivable in what manner the wind pierces through the thick assemblage of those woods, carrying ruin and desolation into particular districts, where there is neither opening nor scope for its rayages, Possibly it descends perpendicularly from heaven in the nature of a tornado, or whirlwind, whose violence nothing can oppose, and which triumphs over all resistance. Trees of enormous size are torn from their roots, magnificent

pines, which would have braved on the ocean tempests more furious, are bent like a bow, and touch the earth with their humbled tops. Such as might be thought capable of making the stoutest resistance are the most roughly treated; and those hurricanes, like the thunder of heaven, which strikes only the loftiest objects, passing over the young, and sparing them, because they are more pliant and flexible, seem to mark the strongest and most robust trees of the forest, which are in condition to meet them with a proud opposition, as alone worthy of their rage. Let the reader fancy to himself three or four. miles of forest, where he is continually in the presence of this disastrous spectacle; let him represent to his imagination the view of a thick wood, where he can scarcely see one upright tree; where all of them being thus forcibly inclined, are either propped by one another, or broken in the middle of the trunk, or torn from their roots and prostrated on the ground: every where trunks, branches, and the ruins of the forest, interrupting his view of the road, and exhibiting a singular picture of confusion and ruin.' Vol. i. P. 231.

Traveling over the ice, where it still remained, was, however, dangerous, from many partial fractures; and our author describes the difficulties in a pleasing manner. The ice, too, was sometimes so transparent as to discover the bottom of the river when shallow, and its inhabitants in deeper water, giving an alarming picture of the insecurity of the frail support on which they journeyed. Mr. Acerbi accounts for this pellucidity by the wind having swept away the snow, while the sun had melted the inequalities of the ice. A slight error on this subject is excusable in an Italian. In fact, the melted snow fills up the inequalities, and, when again frozen by the returning cold of the night, renders the surface perfectly plane. We have often seen this effect produced in our milder climates.

Wasa is a commercial town, and very flourishing; from which our travelers proceeded, chiefly on the ice, by means of sledges. This method, however, is unpleasing. The cavities of the ice are filled by the thawing snow, which give the idea of sinking under the water; and when this fluid is crusted over at night, it will not bear the weight of the sledge. The additional sensation of cracking the ice then increases the horror. The following phænomena are new and curious:

• You meet often in those parts with what may be termed dis ruptions of the ice, which form a strange picturesque appearance, sometimes resembling the ruins of an ancient castle. The cause of these disruptions is the rocks, which happen to be at the depth of some feet under the surface of the water. During the prevalence of the intense cold, the water freezes frequently three feet or more in thickness; the elevation of the sea is consequently diminished, and sinks in proportion to the diameter of the ice that is formed; then those shelves and rocks overtop the surface, and break the cohesion of the ice, while accident deposits the detached masses and fragments in a thousand irregular forms. It is extremely dangerous to traverse

the ice in those parts during night, unless you have the compass con stantly in your hand, and even with it you are not always safe. The traveller is frequently interrupted by those obstacles; he often loses sight of the coast, while the whiteness of the snow dazzles his eyes, and makes it extremely difficult to discern the traces of the sledges which have passed that way before: thus he is in no small danger of losing the road, and of going on in a different direction, which may lead him far in the icy desert; an accident which happened to us more than once.' Vol. i. P. 251.

The account of Uleaborg is very full and satisfactory. The most copious ingredient of its mineral waters is the natron; but they also contain some iron and lime, though in no considerable proportion. The story of the salmon swallowing a silver spoon, a fact not more singular than well authenticated,' we must still feel some doubt of, as the salmon is by no means a voracious fish. The fisherman could probably give some better account of the method by which it came to his hands.

The soil in the vicinity of Uleaborg is chiefly sandy; and in the neighbourhood is a copper-mine of some value. In the same neighbourhood, also, iron is frequently discovered; and a black sand impregnated with iron is found on the shore. Though there are some kinds of schisti in this part of the country, the rock is chiefly granite and its varieties. Our author describes, partially and superficially, what he calls the land-ridge: we wish it had been illustrated by his map, which is full only of little lakes and rivers, resembling tadpoles in a microscope, always without a name. We could not recognise the real direction of the Kolen mountains, nor those of Kemi and Olonetz, without the assistance of Hermelin's map. We must remark too, that, in describing minerals, he commonly employs the Linnæan terms, though the mineralogy of the Swedish naturalist is almost obsolete. The extract from the meteorologic journal kept at Uleaborg is curious. We regret, however, that the degrees of Celsius's thermometer are alone employed. We shall endeavour to reduce them to the scale of Fahrenheit. In 24 years, the greatest heats have varied from 31° to 17° of Celsius; that is, neglecting fractions, from 88° to 63° of Fahrenheit. The greatest cold was in 1781 and 1799, viz. 40° below o, which, by a singular co-incidence, is also 40 below the zero of Fahrenheit. The medium heat is 24° of Celsius, about 76° of Fahrenheit: the medium cold, 30, 22 of Fahrenheit. The medium temperature is about the freezing point.

Our travelers made a considerable stay at Uleaborg, seduced by a pleasing society, by the charms of music, and by the sports of the field, particularly shooting. To this indeed they sacrificed a great part of the conveniences of their future journey; for the ice no longer supplied a solid road. In this place they are almost converted to Mesmerism; for the baron, an animal-magnetiser