The Romance of the Woods

Such, in brief, is the modus operandi of the crawfisher. We all knew the way to do it, we of the Sairki party; and the tying on of the bait and the placing of the sticks were finished as quickly as these operations could be performed with a due regard to efficiency, lots having decided the portion of bank to be worked by each of us. Then came the quarter of an hour during which it is the etiquette of the crawfisher to allow his prey to discover and to enjoy undisturbed the refreshments provided for him. I do not know whether schoolboys possess souls—presumably they are provided with a special schoolboy quality—but in any case we, at least, were entirely unable to possess those souls in patience, and that little quarter of an hour was spent by each of us upon his own portion of bank under a carking sense of grievance. We felt that we were conceding too much to the crawfish. Personally I passed my fifteen minutes at full length in the long grass, within a yard or two of the water, and any one but a schoolboy would have been glad enough of the opportunity to lie thus beneath the brilliant northern August sky upon a bed of wild flowers, which, if one chose to sit still and pick one specimen of each, would have filled his hands with a hundred delicate stems without the necessity to stretch beyond an easy arm-reach. I have never seen any place that equalled the country about Mourino for the wealth and variety of its wild flowers, or the luxuriance of the ground-berries in the woods—Arctic strawberry, bilberry, cranberry, raspberry, and a berry which I remember as making the most delicious bitter-sweet jam, called brousnika. As for the flowers, the anemone is the only representative of our familiar spring visitors, but the summer months are gorgeous with every blossom that our own English fields can boast, with few exceptions, besides lilies of the valley, linnæa borealis, a lovely creeping plant with a tiny starry flower; "star of Bethlehem," and other varieties not often seen in this country.

But the longest and most vexatious wait must come to an end in its season, and at last the crawling minutes had sped by and we were at liberty to commence the business of the day. Oh, the delightful excitement of the first visit to each stick! How my heart beat, I remember, as I grasped the first of them, and with somewhat trembling fingers raised it cautiously a few inches towards the surface, peering the while into the dark brown depths to catch the earliest possible glimpse of the desired visitor. The water seemed extra dark in colour to-day, to spite one, and the stick had to be slowly lifted to within a foot or so of the keen eyes watching above it before the meat could be distinguished at the end of it. There it is at last—now then! Is that the claw of a crawfish sticking on to it, or not? It may be, but if so it is a tiny one. Carefully the hand-net is drawn towards the bait, up the stream, for otherwise the current bulges the network inside out, and deftly the string-prison is placed underneath the end of the stick—there! If it is a crawfish I have got him safe. Up comes stick, and up comes net with it to the surface—alas, no! It was but the split end of a piece of "machalka," and not the claw of a crawfish. Down goes the stick again to its place at the bottom of the stream, and away go I to the next one. Here a strong waggling at the end of it when it is raised from the bottom tells me that undoubtedly a guest is availing himself of my hospitality; caution must be observed—yea, caution must be doubly cautious. It is a big fellow by the feel, and he is still tugging away as I raise the stick with breathless care towards the surface. Now I can see the bait, or rather I can see the place where the meat may be supposed to be; for there is nothing visible but a dark mass which hides the bait from view. Now comes the tug of war. The current is rather strong, and the exertion of bringing the broom-handled net against it is considerable; but this is not a moment to think of difficulties. Down comes fate upon the thoughtless reveller; a turn of the wrist with the right, and a swift upward motion of the left arm, and anything there may chance to be busying itself at the baited end of the stick is my own. What do I see? A big crawfish? It is indeed a big crawfish, and with it a second and yet a third, true Sairki monsters, all three of them, seething and glistening in their dark brown armour at the bottom of the net, and laying hold angrily of each other wherever they can fasten a claw, as though each were chastising his companions for having brought him into this mess. They must be taken up carefully, one by one, and held by the back, else those cruel-looking claws will lay hold of one's fingers and inflict a pinch which will be a memorable circumstance for some little while. These three fellows, exactly like lobsters made in a smaller mould, so far as the unscientific eye can judge, are about six to seven inches in length from head to end of tail; one of them has one large claw and the other quite a miniature member, as though it had never emerged from its baby stage; the truth being that the warrior has lost one of his natural weapons, probably in a fight with a rival, and that a beneficent nature is providing him with a substitute as quickly as can be managed. If I place one of these creatures upon the ground, instead of in the watering-pot prepared for his reception, he will instantly set off backwards in the direction of the river. I have tried this at all distances from the water, placing a crawfish as far as several hundred yards from his native element, and pointing him in the wrong direction; yet in defiance of all obstacles, the poor fellow invariably and without hesitation made straight for that point of the compass in which instinct told him lay the stream which was his home. And so was made the round of the sticks; one producing nothing, another a single tiny victim, a third four at once, and so on to the twelfth and last; the net results of the first round being seventeen crawfish of a fair average size. Then the proceedings began again, da capo. The sport generally improved up to about the fifth round, while the inhabitants of the stream were gradually becoming aware of the feast spread for them at easy distances all down the river. After the sixth round the numbers fell off again, until, eventually, a second portion of the bank had to be worked, the original lie having been exhausted. The largest haul that I ever made from one stick at one swoop was six crawfish, all good ones, and one of them a giant. We had agreed to put back the babies, the very tiniest, that is; though we invariably took a great number home with us which we did not intend to eat, in order to let them go at the bottom of the garden as stock for our own portion of the river, and to afford us sport when they should have grown to more respectable dimensions. They always accommodated themselves to circumstances, and remained contentedly where they had been put in.

When we grew tired of capturing our crawfish in the orthodox manner we adopted another plan; this involved, first, the finding of a shallow place in which, when found, we waded about with a short stick in one hand and a net in the other. When we caught sight of a crawfish wandering along or trying to hide the too expansive volume of his tail beneath a stone designed to conceal a junior member of the family only, all we had to do was to suddenly place the stick in front of his nose, at the same instant holding the net immediately behind him, when the simple creature would promptly commit suicide by running backwards into prison.

Then there was trolling for pike in the quiet pools when we were weary of the crawfish. There were good pike to be had at Sairki, and their favourite food was spoons—so, at least, one would suppose from the voracity with which they endeavoured to devour those we offered for their destruction. Many an exciting half-hour was afforded us by the good-natured Sairki pike; they generally got away in the end, but always thoroughly entered into the fun of the thing and obliged us, while the game lasted, by pretending to be doing their best to escape our unscientific attempts to bring them to book. Probably they could have rid themselves of the bait and us at any moment if they had been so disposed, but they were too good-natured. Now and then we caught one, but very rarely.

And so the summer day would pass with its sport and its bathing and its incalculable sandwiches, until the brilliant sunshine began to wane and the time came to shoulder our nets and hoist our heavily loaded watering-pots and mount the hill to the village. As for our sticks, we hospitably left these in the water in order that the crawfish remaining in the neighbourhood might enjoy themselves to the full and learn to laugh at those of their fellows who were disposed to look with suspicion at bits of meat attached to the ends of sticks. They might now finish the food with absolute impunity, and would come to the feast at our next visit without a thought of danger.

A memorable ceremony was the counting of the victims up at the village. This was performed in the midst of a gaping and ejaculating crowd of Finnish children, a score or so of scantily dressed, fair-haired little maidens and their brothers, who expressed their delight with the outcome of our prowess in a ceaseless chatter of their own language, monosyllabic, but full of extremely expressive inflections. We put ourselves upon the best of terms with these little foreigners by letting loose a number of our scaly captives among their naked toes, a move which caused them to jump about and scream in the wildest delight. The distribution of a few copecks among them completed our popularity thus easily acquired. The Finns are a good-natured, inoffensive race, when properly treated; but proud and stolid and somewhat lazy, and withal dignified and extremely jealous of their personal independence. The commonest Finn peasant considers himself the equal of any other man. Destiny may have put the Tsar in a warmer corner than himself, perhaps, but that does not make the Tsar the better man of the two. "The Tsar has a pair of legs exactly like my own," a Finn peasant once remarked to the writer, and the saying sums up very concisely the attitude of this quiet but dignified member of the human family towards his fellow-men.

Six hundred and thirty-seven was the sum total of our day's netting, besides many others caught and put back: not a bad tally! It was sufficient to supply the whole of the British colony in Mourino, which is a good large one, with crawfish enough to last them for some time. These are most delicious eating, as highly flavoured as the lobster, but much more tender and less stringy. A certain soup made of crawfish is declared by gourmets to be simply unequalled by any other decoction known under the name of potage.

And so, sped upon our way by the shouts of our admiring friends the little Finnish maids and urchins, we set forth once more to brave the perils and discomforts of the return journey. I know not what the unfortunate creatures in the watering-pots and the fishing-baskets may have thought of the bumpings and jars that marked our progress along that terrible road, but I do know that the day's wading and netting had not damped our own spirits in any appreciable degree. The ponies, knowing that they were directed homewards, flew along like mad things; breakneck races were once again the order of the day, and once again did our special Providence preserve us from the destruction we courted. Swiftly, too swiftly for us, the miles were left behind, and the last rays of the setting sun had scarcely lighted up the green cupola of Mourino church when, with whips cracking, drivers shouting, dust flying in clouds, and six human beings (counting schoolboys as coming under that category) and 637 crawfish bumping about like peas on a drum-head, we raced up to the lodge gates—and the day was over.

  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.