The Romance of the Woods

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.

And for an hour we slowly float up and down and across the little lagoon, and the monster fish leap and play all round us, so that we might, if we pleased, touch them with our hands; they almost jump into the very boat at our feet, but neither minnow, nor fly, nor whisky-bobbie will tempt them.

We must leave the place at midnight, alas! for the Count's huge establishment—he has built a palace in this once beautiful place, beautiful in the fullest loveliness of prodigal nature—the Count's many servants and officers and stewards and clerks will not retire until we depart, and we cannot decently keep them all up later than twelve. Nevertheless, we will rest for half-an-hour, no more, and then try again for an hour or three-quarters of an hour; perhaps we may yet tempt at least one of these million monsters from his element. At present it is too tantalising to bear; we must turn our backs upon the seething basin and walk inland for the half-hour of enforced idleness—and then–

C. G. tells me that his fisherman has recognised him as an old friend, and declares that he, C. G., in the old club days, gave him, Mikki, a pair of trousers. C. G. does not remember the circumstance, but feels that the trousers were garments well bestowed, for Mikki will certainly take him to the best places by virtue of the gift. Cast your bread, says C. G., upon the waters, or in other words, freely distribute old pairs of trousers, and you shall reap the benefit of your liberality after many days.

Then we returned and settled ourselves once more in our luxurious, red-velvet cushioned boats, selected our biggest and most fascinating phantoms, and started. It was now past eleven o'clock. The fish had nearly finished their tantalising antics at the surface and had disappeared into the secret depths; the swirling water was scarcely broken by a single leaping monster. Night had fallen at last: it was as still, as silent, as mysterious, as bewitching as a dream-river. You could hear the roar and turmoil of the Voksa breaking away in rapids at the far end of the basin, but here in the smooth water there was no sound—only a strong, silent draw of deep current towards the place where lake and river parted. Where were the fish? What had become of the thousands of sportive giants of half-an-hour ago? I tried to imagine them at the bottom, each lying behind stone or snag—lying with moving gill and bright silver body waving in the current, on the look-out for prey. Did they watch my blue phantom as it passed, and half rush out at it, but hold back at the last moment, noticing something which aroused suspicion in the cut of tail, or fin, or red marks on the white belly? There is something fearfully sacrilegious about all this. How dare I float with impunity out here, at night, above these millions of scaly beings, intent on their destruction and fearing nothing for myself? What about the water-spirits—the Vodyannui of Sclavonic folklore? This is their own place: it is probably a sacred retreat of theirs. At any moment they might–

Away go thoughts of water-folk and of everything else, for there is a great jerk. My heart goes off at a hand gallop; my rod instinctively stands upright. Fifty yards away there is a rush and the sudden flash of a silver streak of light—I lower the point for an instant, an act of courtesy always to be paid to a leaping fish—then there is a whirr and a few moments of delirious, delicious agitation. Yohann, my man, is making for the land where the Count has built him a wonderful granite embankment for the convenient landing of fish; we reach it and I step out; but my captive has not the smallest intention of giving in yet; he is closer in now, but repeatedly he bolts away and increases the distance again. Suddenly I perceive that C. G. is beside me: he, too, is playing a fish—a big one he tells me. It is a race who will requisition the huge landing-net first. Up and down the embankment we go, and the fish are leaping and struggling close in now; but C. G. gets his home first, a beauty of nearly twenty pounds; and mine, tired out, is ready to be landed as soon as the net is free. A truly lovely fish, too, but smaller than his by several pounds—no time to weigh either of them now.

Back we go, and in three minutes both are on land once more, and each is busy in the deliriously fascinating occupation of battling with another giant. Oh! this is life indeed. Better half-an-hour of Harraka than a cycle of Cathay! Quick, C. G.; land your fish and give me the net, and let us both start again; this is too splendid to waste a minute!

And again we put forth our fatal phantoms, and two more beauties are presently transferred from the secret places of this wonder-tank to the hot granite of the Count's quay—and then, alas! it is midnight, and we must go. Seventy-five pounds, in six fish, in little more than half-an-hour; it is good enough, C. G. Furthermore, we are the richer by more than these mere seventy-five pounds of trout-flesh, for we have seen a great sight to-night; we have been in Paradise; we have burst, this day, into the secret places of the trout people, the very sanctuary and central rendezvous of the tribe.

What should we have caught had we been able to continue our fishing on that marvellous night? Who can tell? If the fish are on the feed, really on the feed, in that wonderful basin, I believe you might catch any number while the appetite of the community lasted; there is no lack of them. No possible amount of angling could produce the smallest visible effect upon the numbers of the thousands we saw that night, when the basin boiled and splashed again with the play of them. A paradise indeed for anglers is this Finland paradise of the Voksa, and, alas! a paradise lost.

  CHAPTER V

AFTER DUCKS ON LADOGA

Once upon a time when Autumn was holding sway, and Winter was within hail, a Russian friend, knowing my weakness for making acquaintance with every kind of creature to be seen in the Land of the Tsars, very kindly proposed to me to journey with him up the Neva to Schlüsselburg, or near it, where he owned a large house and much land; and there to embark in his steam-launch for a duck-shooting cruise on Lake Ladoga.

Duck-shooting from a steam-launch! This would be quite a novel experience to me, and I jumped gladly at the proposal. But how were we going to get within range of ducks in a puffing and smoking steam-launch? I asked. Were they tame ducks?

"Tame ducks!" repeated my outraged host; "no, indeed; on the contrary, the ducks on Ladoga are the very wildest things in creation."

"Then how are we going to get at them in the open?" I persisted, with true British pertinacity. But my host only said, "Wait and see." His manner was full of conviction; it was impossible to doubt his good faith; clearly he was the proprietor of a secret, which, in time, I too should learn! Delightful! I am for it; I shall see that there is something new under heaven!

My friend Prohoroff is a capital fellow and a good sportsman. I have shot with him over moor and forest more than once, and found him possessed of a chivalrous generosity and sportsmanlike nature rare among the so-called sportsmen of his country. Prohoroff has a soul above family pot-shots at young coveys huddled beneath their mother's wing; he would scorn to break the egg of a grey hen in order to add its unfledged contents to that of his game-bag; that is not Prohoroff's style, which is robust, and broad, and British. He lets his birds fly, does Prohoroff, and misses them like a man; moreover, he does not encourage his dog to catch the young game. Prohoroff has rubbed shoulders with Britishers, and has eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in matters appertaining to fair dealing between man and the brute creation. I shall be quite safe in Prohoroff's hands.

From St. Petersburg to Schlüsselburg, up the Neva, is a trip of some six or seven hours by the deliberate steamer in which the journey is made; it is, after all, the whole length of the Neva, from source to sea. And a beautiful river it is, as far as the stream itself is concerned. But the banks are the reverse of interesting. Flat and dull, with here a belt of pine forest, and there a tumble-down village—all Russian villages present a tumble-down appearance—and stubble and potatoes and waste land: there is not much to look at, and no towns of any size and importance are passed. But the water is beautiful—clear and white, and, at this season—early October—well stocked with salmon on the wander between lake and sea. These may be caught, rarely, with a minnow, one has been taken with a fly, I have heard, but only one in the memory of man. For the rest, the fishermen who ply for them with big nets worked by a windlass from wooden jetties, appear to make good hauls, and the quality of the fish is excellent. I should dearly love to stop and have a cast or two for one of them; but this is impossible. Prohoroff tells me that one of the favourite pastimes of St. Petersburgers, with a taste for gentle gambling, is to be conveyed out to one of these fishing stations, and to speculate in "hauls" before the event. The cost of a "haul" about to be made and of course absolutely fortuitous as to its results, is from three to five roubles—six to ten shillings. The speculator may find himself possessor of salmon enough, as the result of but one cast, to feed a regiment for a week, or—if not one of the favoured of Fortune—may purchase a dozen "hauls" of the net and go away empty-handed. If so, he is sure to see, as he floats dejectedly away, a vast quantity of fish landed at the very next haul after his departure; he will see their silver sides gleaming in the sun from a distance, and he will give his opinion as to the reliability of the goddess who holds the scales.