CHAPTER I
OUR FIRST PEEP AT FINLAND
FINLAND, or, as the natives call it, Suomi, is a country of Jakes and islands; a vast continent about which strangers hardly know anything, beyond such rude facts as are learnt at school, viz., that “Finland is surrounded by the Gulfs of Finland and Bothnia on the South and West, and bordered by Russia and Lapland on the East and North,” and yet Finland is larger than our own England, Scotland, Ireland, ay, and the Netherlands, all put together!
When we first thought of going to Suomi, we naturally tried to procure a Finnish guide-book and map; but no guide-book was to be obtained in all London, except one small pamphlet about a dozen pages long; while at our best-known map shop the only thing we could find was an enormous cardboard chart costing thirty shillings! No one ever dreamed of going to Finland apparently. Nevertheless, Finland is not the home of barbarians, as some folk imagine, neither do Polar bears walk continually about the streets, nor reindeer pull sledges in summer,—items that have several times been suggested to the writer!
Nothing daunted by want of information, however, we packed up our traps and started.
We were three women, my sister, Frau von Lilly—born Finlander—and the humble writer of the following pages. That was the beginning of the party, but it in-
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