CHAPTER IV
A FINLAND PARADISE
Finland, or Fen-land: the land of fens, "the country of a thousand lakes"; in Finnish Suomen-maa: "the swampy region." The root suom, if not related to our own swamp—which is a matter upon which the present writer can give no opinion worth having—at all events appears to have the same meaning, and is quite similar enough in sound to please the ear of plain people with a neat, amateur appreciation for roots. It is indeed the country of a thousand lakes—ten thousand. Glance at the map; it almost makes a man's eyes water to look at it! As represented there, the entire country appears to be more water than dry land; the inhabitants must surely be obliged to get about the place in boats—or goloshes, you will think—and, oh! what a place for the fishermen! Not the people in smacks and trawlers, I mean; but for men with rods, and lines, and reels, and flies, and phantoms, and landing nets, and so on: think of it—all these fresh-water lakes—a network of ideal corners for the Salmonidæ, communicating one with another and with Ladoga and the Gulfs of Finland and Bothnia by means of glorious fishing rivers! A place for fishermen indeed.
Look at the map, my dear reader, and consider the province from the point of view of the fish and their habits; it is the fishes' heaven, and being so it is certainly the paradise of anglers. A glance at the map will show that between Uleaborg in the north and Wiborg in the south there must be many spots which, to the keen fishing man, would in all probability present such piscatorial attractions as would entitle them to be called, as I have called one particular spot about to be described, "A Finland Paradise." I believe that the salmon fishing on the Ulea at Uleaborg, for instance, is so excellent that those who have deserted Norway or Scotland in favour of this remote Finnish spot are inclined to go no more a-roving, but to cry "Eureka," and spend the rest of their days by Bothnia's placid waters. But of this I can only speak from hearsay and from the printed reports of others, and will only add that I have been informed that fishing rights are easily obtainable at Uleaborg; that such rights are absurdly inexpensive; and that there is some one in that distant city who can speak English, and who can put the traveller in the way of getting an introduction into the best salmon society.
But my Finland Paradise is not in far Uleaborg, nor yet in any of the thousand or ten thousand other places which on the testimony of the map of Finland must be equally worthy of the title. I must warn my readers that there is no admission to my paradise, excepting by favour of those happy ones who possess the right to inhabit it. In other words it is not, like Uleaborg and hundreds of other places, accessible to the ordinary travelling man and the itinerant sportsman. Its doors are closed to the public; the fishing is preserved, rightly and jealously preserved.
There is a railway, the Finnish Railway, as it is called, which runs from St. Petersburg to Hango, at the mouth of the Gulf of Finland. On this railway, at a distance of four hours from St. Petersburg, is Wiborg, the very ancient capital and castle of the Karelian Finns, who were conquered by Torkel C'nutson in 1293. From Wiborg there is a branch line to Imatra, built for the accommodation of tourists anxious to visit the wonderful rapids or falls at the last-named place. Imatra is on a river known variously as the Vuoksen, or the Voksa, which connects the great Saima Lake with the still greater Ladoga; which, again, is connected with the open sea, as all the world knows, by the Neva. The Voksa is, I should think, one of the most beautiful rivers in the world. Wide, and clear as crystal, we have nothing like it in England; it has no tide to yellow it, no navigation to stir and distress its calm depths; the fish—grayling and trout—love it, and so does every human creature who has ever set eyes upon it, and who knows how to appreciate a big, free, clean, noble river when he sees it.
Lake Saima is a long sheet of water measuring from end to end one hundred and fifty miles or more, being quite as long as Ladoga itself, though much narrower and studded all over with islands. Saima is full of fish—great lake trout and others of the Salmonidæ, together with numberless other finny creatures of less exalted birth and parentage. Now all these fish occasionally pine, if not for actual sea travel, at least for such change of air and diet as a little wandering in running water can afford them. This they can only obtain by visiting the sole existing outlet (excepting the Saima Canal, leading to the Gulf of Finland, which cannot count as a river) to the entire hundred and fifty miles of lake, the Voksa.
Now, just where the Voksa takes its departure from the Saima upon its journey of fifty-or-so miles to the Ladoga, the Saima Lake narrows into a round basin of about one-third of a mile in diameter, which basin forms a kind of ante-room to the river, which starts out bravely from the western end thereof in a glorious rapid, the descent being considerable, and the consequent draw of current throughout the basin very strong, though not very perceptible at the surface. Through this basin, or ante-room, known as Harraka, every single fish which desires to visit the river from the lake, or vice versâ, must pass as through a turnpike gate; and many are the fish that have had to pay blood-toll for the privilege. The basin is at all times crammed with fish; it is their recognised rendezvous; it is Harraka, the paradise par excellence of the Voksa; the place to which all good fishermen should go when they die, unless they know of a better. I don't.
This paradise was, until a few years ago, in the hands of a few Englishmen, residents in St. Petersburg, who discovered it and acquired the rights of enjoying it as a fishing club. They built unto themselves a comfortable and most convenient lodge, just at the very spot where Voksa, in froth and delicious chatter of bounding rapids, bids farewell of Saima and starts exuberantly on his race to Ladoga, little dreaming of the fearful gauntlet to be run, a few miles away, at Imatra. These thrice happy Britishers, I repeat, acquired Paradise: they planted their feet in the Garden of Eden; they tasted of the delights of Harraka for several seasons, and then by misfortune they lost it. By some most deplorable accident or misunderstanding the letting of the place went past them, and Harraka, the paradise of anglers, became a beautiful memory and nothing more. The flaming sword of jealous proprietorship stood for ever between them and the lost Eden of their happiness.
Then those men did the next best thing open to them. They secured a small island a few miles lower down the river, together with the fishing rights around it for a space of a mile or so, and upon that island, known as Varpa-Saari, they pitched their tent, building a charming house, engaging fishermen well acquainted with every inch of the newly acquired water, and, in a word, making the best of what was distinctly a "bad job."
Varpa-Saari is not Harraka. But since, according to some learned commentators, there are seven heavens, and since Harraka is certainly the seventh or highest of these, Varpa may surely lay claim to be called one of the remaining six. It is, in truth, a very delightful place. The river is here some three hundred yards in width, and is divided by the island into two channels, both of which show their teeth as they angrily pass the obstruction in a tumult of noisily chattering and scolding rapids on either side. Around the island platforms have been built jutting out into the turbulent water for the convenience of those who wish to try for the favours of grayling or trout with fly, in preference to spinning for them with a minnow from a boat.
It was the delightful privilege of the writer to spend a portion of the summer of 1894 in the land of the Tsar; and to me, ready and anxious for every kind of exploit, whether with rod or gun, came my friend C. G., whilom a member of the Paradise Lost of Harraka, now one of the proprietors of Varpa-Saari, with hospitable proposals, which ended in the speedy getting together of our respective gladstones, and the collection, on my part, of a great number of borrowed rods and reels and flies and minnows and other piscatorial paraphernalia, and our prompt departure upon a three days' sojourn in the delicious retreats of Varpa Island. It cannot, I should think, be much more than sixty miles from St. Petersburg to Wiborg, but the trains of the Finnish line are imbued with all the dignity and deliberation which are inherent in the Finnish character, and they do not hurry themselves. A good English express would do the journey in an hour; the Wiborg express occupies the best part of four. But the carriages are certainly comfortable and run very smoothly.
There is a custom-house somewhere between the two great cities named—I think it is at Tereyoki—but we are not asked to disclose the secrets of our gladstones or to reveal the riches of our superbly appointed commissariat, for C. G. is the most hospitable of hosts as well as the most talented of caterers, and his arrangements for our three days' exile in the wilds of Finland are such as to strangle in the birth any vague ideas of prospective "roughing it."
So we glide slowly and smoothly through the south-eastern portion of the Land of Fens, which, so far, greatly resembles the Russia we have just left; and if we look out for one of the thousand lakes we do not see it, and shall not until Wiborg itself is reached; though, as it happens, I know of several further inland—old familiar places where in former days I have angled for many large perch and pike, killed many a duck, missed many a snipe, enjoyed many a happy hour. It is hot with all the closeness of the Russian July; but, fortunately, this is the Finnish and not a Russian railway, and though we manufacture a delightful draught by opening the windows on both sides of the carriage, we are not threatened for this reason with the terrors and tortures to which those are subjected who infringe the bye-laws of the company. It was but a few days before that, travelling upon a Russian line, and feeling asphyxiated by the heat of the carriage, I had, in my innocence, let down the windows on both sides. Instantly a guard rushed up and closed one, that on the side from which the infinitesimal air that existed happened to be blowing. I protested. The guard expressed horror: there would be a draught, he explained. I hastened to assure him that that was exactly what I most wished to bring about, and made as though to reopen the window which he had closed. But this the guard would not permit. I should catch cold, he said, and the company could not dream of allowing their passengers to catch cold. I argued, I entreated, but in vain, and eventually I went to stand upon the balcony outside. But, alas! this also, it appeared, was not permissible just at present, and that for a peculiar reason: a train conveying some member of the Imperial family was to meet us presently, and no man might stand outside until it had safely passed. In the end I was compelled to return to the stifling carriage, wherein I was cooked to a turn by the time I reached my destination.
But if the train from St. Petersburg to Wiborg is slow, what shall be said of that from the latter place to Imatra? Yet why, after all, should anything be said? There was no hardship in travelling now, for it was evening and cooler, and the country had grown more characteristically Finnish. Here and there were small lakes, the outposts of the thousand, the ten thousand, that lay calm and majestic somewhere beyond. We were in Finland now beyond a doubt.
But C. G. has a surprise for me—for me who have never been in this part of the world before—have never even seen Imatra. We shall be at a station called St. Andrea soon, he tells me, and then I shall see something which will interest me. What? I am to wait; it shall burst upon my sight.
It does. It bursts upon my sight in all the calm beauty of its wide, white, gleaming, rippling majesty—the Voksa. At this distant spot, dedicated to the first Englishman probably who ever set foot in Finland, St. Henry,1 my delighted English eyes catch their first glimpse of the ideal river—a river any Englishman would love at first sight. And what a spot for the fisherman! As I live, there is one at it down there. I can see him from the train whipping merrily at the rapids beneath the railway bridge! Instantly all the apathy of the long, slow journey is swallowed up in the enthusiasm of the angler; I feel inclined to wave my cap from the window and cry, like Xenophon's men, "Thalatta, thalatta!" Happy Bishop Henry, friend of Eric IX. of Sweden, who, about 1120, an Englishman, though Bishop of Upsala, brought Bible and sword and conquered and converted this pleasant land for his master, and became patron saint thereof. St. Andrea is delightfully situated indeed. I wonder whether our canonised countryman who gave his name to it was ever here? St. Andrea sounds and reads more like St. Andrew than St. Henry, but I may explain that Henrys are always Andrews in Russia, just as William is changed to Basil, Edward to Dmitry, Bernard to Boris, and so on, because where names do not exist in the Saints' calendar, substitutes have had to be found. In the case of Henry, the Finns appear to have followed the example of their neighbours, and to have changed Henry into Andrea. St. Andrew himself is connected with Russia, but in no way, I believe, with Finland. This saint is said to have travelled, preaching the Gospel, from the Holy Land to Byzantium, and thence along the Black Sea to the Danube, crossing that river and reaching eventually the Dnieper. Here he went up country as far as the spot where Kief was afterwards built, and in this place, before turning to retrace his steps to Byzantium, he uttered a long prophecy as to the size and importance of the city which should one day stand in that site, and which should be dedicated to the faith which he had then come to preach. So much for the Saints Andrew and Henry, either of whom may claim, as far as names go, the honour of affording one to the remote Finnish village close to which the beautiful Voksa is first seen by the tourist.
Thence to Imatra is not far, and from Imatra to Varpa-Saari is a short drive of three miles or so, past the renowned "falls," about which I shall have more to say later. My friend and I accomplish this distance luxuriously in a spring cart, the commissariat following in a second vehicle. The roads in Finland are not like the roads in Russia. The Finnish roads are civilised, and may be driven upon without fatal results.
It was past eleven now, of a glorious July night, and in the white northern twilight, which is nearly daylight, we cantered up to the riverside and drew up at the spot where a landing stage has been made, communicating by means of an overhead wire over the Voksa with the island in mid-stream. The house is upon the island, and from the wire, at the island end, depends a bell. A tug at our end sets this bell clanging and a dog barking, destroying the calm majesty of the night in an instant, and causing dogs in all directions, far and near, to respond to the canine voice from mid-river in sleepy, querulous accents, as though barking were a terrible bore, but must be done out of conscientious motives. While we wait for the boat which is to take us across we hear ourselves hailed in English from some point hidden in the midnight mystery of the river, and when our eyes have located the sound we discover two boats swimming silently side by side, looking all one piece with the water, mystic, wonderful! It is J. H. and E. H., who have driven over from their lovely summer home a few miles below Imatra for a night's fishing in the Varpa waters. Slowly the two boats approach—it seems a sin to murder the marvel of the stillness by speaking—like two swans they swim towards us in the white twilight. Are we awake, and is all this really happening, or are these the creatures of a sleep-picture, and the witchery of the midnight Voksa a mere dream of unreal delight? The winding of two reels and C. G.'s hearty enquiry as to "what sport" has been enjoyed by these two midnight fishers put to flight all ideas of the unreality of things, and in a very few minutes we are each seated in a boat and crossing the gleaming, rippling, hurrying Voksa towards the little island which is to be our home for the next three days. As we reach the landing-stage at the island we find a sleepy Finn fisherman just preparing a boat, in response to our bell-summons, to take us across; but our friends have saved him this trouble. They land us, and away they float again, the two light craft moving noiselessly over the broad river propelled by the fisherman-Finn in the bows, and in the dim and mysterious distance we can hear the soft crake, crake of their reels as the lines are let out once more after having been wound in in compliment to ourselves. Before we are out of hearing there is a whirr, and we know that the phantom of one of them has found a billet.
Then up through leafy paths to the house, with only the murmur of water audible, but that from every side; with here a gleam and there a gleam between the trees, and everything else silence and shady darkness and mystery, and one's very soul feeling half numbed with the wonder of being in such a place and at such a time.
As for the house, it is the ideal of what a fishing lodge should be, with its racks for rods outside and in; its glorious roomy balcony dining-room, its large central sitting-room and its half-dozen or more of most excellent bedrooms, each commanding a more fascinating view over trees and river than its next neighbour, and each with the perpetual sing-song of the gentle mother Voksa to sing the tired angler to sleep with her eternal lullaby.
And now, as C. G. most appropriately observes, a little supper. The night and the place and the circumstances are about as full of poetry as such things can be; my very soul seems steeped in mysticism, and the witchery of the surroundings has made a poet of me to my very backbone; but—well, they did not give us time to eat at Wiborg, nor at St. Andrea, nor anywhere else, and the very word "supper" is sufficient to send poetry to the winds and to convert the poet into the ravening wolf until the leeway of the appetite has been made up. Luckily there is plenty to eat and it is ready to hand. Julia, the Finn cook, a neat, clean-looking person who cannot speak or understand a single word of Russian or anything else but Finnish—Julia has baked some quite delicious bread; and there is Finnish butter—none of your "Dosset" this!—and C. G.'s baskets contain town-bought dainties of the very best: it is pleasant to sit and enjoy such a supper with the white gleam of the midnight Voksa visible to us wherever we choose to peep for it between the ghostly trees that would screen it from us; and with the soft babble of her waters for ever in our ears, as though they were constantly telling of the wonders in trout and silver grayling that lurk and hide from us in the secret depths beneath; as though each wavelet had such a secret to tell us and were murmuring to us as it passed, "Down below—just here—oh, such a trout! oh, such a trout! Quick, or he will be off and away!"
There can be no question of sleeping this night. We must fix up our rods and choose our phantom minnows, and go out in boats that are phantoms also, like those ghostly fellows, J. and E. H., there, who can be seen occasionally passing slowly across the white water in the distance, silent, mysterious, intent upon their spinning, two phantoms, in phantom boats and with phantom boatmen, fishing with phantom minnows, rightly so-called—all phantoms together! What matter if we catch anything or nothing? We must go, if it be only to steep our souls in the wonderful silence and beauty of this July night on the water, and to drink in the intoxicating delight and novelty of the whole thing.
And in an hour we are there, floating on Voksa's white bosom, propelled softly hither and thither as our boatmen think best; for these men know where the huge silver Voksa and Saima trout most do congregate, and the charm and wonder of the river and of the night are nothing to them so long as some big ten or fifteen pounder can be induced to accept the invitation our cruel blue minnows hold out to them. These superb fish are, so far as I can make out, of three kinds. First, great silvery fellows with bright red spots, for all the world like overgrown brothers of the little river trout. Then there are darker coloured fish, of a golden brown hue, with spots less brightly accentuated, and, I think, larger heads. Of these two kinds the former is the handsomer fish, but both are splendid specimens, and are caught up to twenty-four pounds in weight, C. G. having taken the record in this respect. The third specimen I saw was a fish which I should have called a salmon, but, I believe, erroneously. The Finns have a simple rule. To them all fish over five pounds in weight are "Lochi," salmon (German, Lachs; Russian, Lososino). Now there are plenty of salmon in the Neva, and therefore in Lake Ladoga also; and the reader might suppose that, since the Voksa flows into the Ladoga, there may be salmon in the Voksa just as well as in Ladoga itself. So there may, in the lower parts of the river, but between Ladoga and Saima Lakes there is a barrier, known as the Imatra Falls, which must surely be an insurmountable obstacle to the most enterprising of salmon. The Voksa is a broad, generous, full-flowing river, of three hundred yards in width, which is suddenly compelled at Imatra to compress itself into a narrow gorge of scarcely twenty yards across, and to pass through this as best it can for a distance of a couple of hundred yards or so, after which it is free once more to open itself out to its former wealth of elbow-room. The reader may imagine with how much protest and clamour the surprised and tortured waters of the proud river perform this sudden act of self-compression. Roaring and hissing with rage, they pile themselves mountain high in an instant, and sweep down the moderate incline in a furious phalanx of angry wave-warriors, dashing from one rocky side of the gorge to the other, diving, rearing, whirling, plunging, hurling angry hisses of spray to this side and that, and at the foot of the narrow torture-chamber standing up in mighty water-columns and twisting round to face the rock-walls that have confined them, as though they half thought of turning again and rending them ere they depart once more upon their course in unimpeded freedom and gradually regained calm and majesty. The very idea of any salmon mounting in safety such a whirling, battling, irresistible fury of waters as Imatra is surely outrageous. There cannot be salmon above Imatra. The salmon-like lochi must be a salmon trout, or a lake trout, or some one of the non-seagoing families of Salmonidæ.
Full as the Voksa is of fish, and hard as my friend C. G. and I worked, both from the platforms with fly and from boat with phantoms of every shape and size likely to attract the monsters down in the depths beneath us, it was all in vain—or nearly in vain. We did, indeed, catch a few fish, but nothing very large, and hardly more than enough to keep us well supplied with toothsome, dainty fare for our own table. We offered those fish the choicest delicacies that London makers could produce; we tempted them with phantoms so fascinating that one would suppose any fish of decently discriminative powers would rise from its moist bed and come out, at night, to feed upon them as they lay on the table within the very house. We dangled these tempting morsels over the very spots where they were known to lie; but for two days did these Voksa monsters sulk and turn their faces steadfastly from us. There was thunder in the air; that, we concluded, was the mischief; perhaps during Sunday the storm would break. We would try them again on Monday, and meanwhile we would accept J. H.'s hospitable invitation and drive over to spend Sunday with him at his lovely home at Lappin-Haru (the Ridge, or the District, of the Lapps). Those Lapps who chose this spot for their habitation showed a wise discrimination and a taste for natural beauty of scene and site which one would scarcely look for in that unromantic tribe. Lappin-Haru overlooks the Voksa at one of its loveliest bends; a truly noble river, flowing through dense forests and by the side of tidy, cultivated fields; deep and majestic and silent at this corner, and bursting into rippling laughter at that; a river that bears up the swimmer as buoyantly and as securely as the sea, so strong and so full and ample is the beautiful, bright, clear flood of it. My friend J. H.—the representative in St. Petersburg of a family as well known and as widely respected in Russia as it is in England—has built him a house in this corner of the Voksa Paradise, and a splendid house it is. And though in the very wilds of Finland, yet he is in communication with all centres of civilisation by means of the telephone; indeed, you can even speak to him from the island club at Varpa-Saari, a dozen miles away; while the Imatra trains stop for passengers within a mile of his front door. So quickly do the enlightened Finns avail themselves of the discoveries of science that the southern portion of their province is covered with a network of telephones, and no one in town or country dreams of being without this useful adjunct to civilised comfort.
Delightful indeed was it to come into a bit of England that Sunday morning at Lappin-Haru; delightful to hear English voices and to see English ladies and English children so far away from the madding crowd. And so Sunday passed very delightfully; and now Monday, our last day, has come round. I think it is at lunch this Monday afternoon that C. G. has an inspiration.
"I am going," he says, "to drive to Imatra and telephone over to Harraka for leave to fish there to-night." At this I laugh the laugh of the scornful, for it is well known that Harraka is the Paradise Lost of the English fishers, and that the present proprietors stand, figuratively, at the gate armed with the flaming sword of jealousy in order to keep out, with the utmost strictness, every would-be angler in their unique and incomparable waters.
Nevertheless, C. G. insists that he will try. "Who knows?" he says. "A kind and indulgent spirit may be animating for this day only the heart of Count Arnoff!" (which is not the proprietor's real name); "and, after all, he can but refuse."
This last proposition is so evidently true that I scoff no more, but allow my sanguine C. G. to proceed upon his way, though secretly remaining of the opinion that Count Arnoff would sooner perish than allow us upon his sacred waters.
Now, C. G. is undoubtedly personally fascinating, but how he contrived to exercise his fascination through the telephone I really cannot imagine; yet it is certain that he returned home in a very short time, and that, as I could see by the sunshine of his countenance long before the boat bore him to the landing stage on the island, where I awaited him, he had been successful. The Count himself was away, but his steward had taken upon himself to grant C. G.'s request for an evening's fishing, and this very night was to see us afloat in the magic basin of Harraka. Paradise was to be regained, for one night only!
Oh! the care with which we dried and attended to our lines and reels; the loving discrimination with which we looked over phantom and totnes and whisky-bobbie, and selected the most fascinating that our tin reservoirs could supply. Oh! the anxiety with which we watched the weather during the afternoon, and the deep satisfaction with which we noted that all things tended towards the development of a fine fishing evening.
Then we took boat, at about eight o'clock, and rowed across to a spot where a trap awaited us—and such a trap!—and drove away through the drooping day towards the Count's wonderful water. The trap was a square iron cage on wheels, and the road—when it left the main track and branched off into the pine forest which jealously guards the upper reaches of the Voksa—was not a road at all, but a series of terrible abysses with no bottom excepting the native rock, which is granite in those parts, and painful to jolt against. Had the Count so arranged matters in order to keep intruders from his sacred precincts? We, at all events, were not deterred from pressing forward, and oh! the sight that rewarded us—a sight I shall never forget, and such as I had never thought to see. Try to picture it. When we reached Harraka and the basin or ante-room between Saima Lake and Voksa opened out before us, the entire surface of that basin of a third of a mile diameter was boiling and seething, and positively alive with leaping, gambolling monsters, so that it looked for all the world as though a shower of gigantic, long-shaped hailstones were falling over the entire surface of the water. There was not a square yard of the whole within which, if you watched it for a second or two, you would not see a mighty trout jump. Had it been possible to suddenly intercept a huge net between air and water you would have caught a million.
Even C. G., who has fished this marvellous basin in olden days, before Paradise was lost, has never seen anything like this. Our fingers, as we put up our rods, tremble with the mere excitement of seeing such a sight; we can hardly frame words of wonder and admiration. The feeling is almost awe–
But the two Finnish fishermen appointed to row us about shake their heads discouragingly. When the fish are playing in this way, they give us to understand, they will not take the bait. They are, it appears, not feeding at all, but merely enjoying life, and endeavouring to rid themselves of certain parasites which cling to them at this season. Probably in an hour or two they will feed. This is discouraging, but we intend to try all the same.