The Land of Thor

CHAPTER XXII.

A BATHING SCENE

I devoted the afternoon to a stroll on the sea-shore, which presents many interesting features in the neighborhood of Helsingfors. A considerable portion of the town, as already stated, is built upon immense boulders of solid rock, and some of the streets are entirely impracticable for wheeled vehicles, owing to the rugged masses of stone with which Nature has thought proper to pave them. Indeed, it is no easy task for a pedestrian to make his way through the suburbs, over the tremendous slippery boulders that lie scattered over the earth in every direction, the trail being in some instances higher than the houses. I can not conceive how people can travel over such streets in wet weather; it seems a task only fit for goats under favorable circumstances; but the Finns are an ingenious people, and probably ride on the backs of the goats when walking is impracticable. Passing the straggling lines of fishermen’s huts forming the outskirts of the town, I rambled over two or three miles of rocky fields till I found myself on the shores of the gulf, at a point sufficiently lonesome and desolate to be a thousand miles from any inhabited portion of the globe. Taking possession of a natural chair, worn in the rocks by the rains of many centuries, I seated myself upon its mossy cushion, and, baring my head to the pleasant sea-breeze, quietly enjoyed the scene. Perhaps this very seat was the throne of an old viking! Here were sea-shells, and glittering pebbles, and tufts of moss for his crown; and here were sea-gulls to make music for him, and the spray from the wild waves to keep him cool; and a thousand rock-bound islands, lying outspread to the north, with grottoes in them for his ships; and piles upon piles of rocky palaces all around, covered with golden roofs of moss; and every thing, in short, that could make glad the heart of a grim old viking residing on the edge of the arctic circle. And if this summer scene, with its blue sea, and wood-capped islands, and warm sun, and balmy breeze, could not make glad his heart, it would not be difficult to imagine what changes winter could bring over it, and how the old viking, sitting on his throne by the sea-shore, could enjoy the dead and icy waste before him; and how the winter drifts would whistle through his hair; and how cheery the jagged rocks would look peeping up out of the snow-drifts; and how balmy would be the night-air at sixty degrees below freezing-point; and how the old viking would shake his beard with laughter as he warmed his hands in a midday sun, only ten feet above the horizon, and make the icicles rattle on his chin; and sit thus laughing and blowing his fingers, and rattling his icy beard, and saying to himself, “What a blessing to be a Finlander! How horribly the natives of Spain and Italy must suffer from bad climate! What a pity it is Finland is not large enough to accommodate the whole human race.” With such thoughts as these I amused myself for some time, soothed and charmed by the pleasant sea-breeze and the music of the waves upon the rocks. The air was deliciously pure, and the odor of the sea-weeds had something in it so healthful and inspiring that I was insensibly carried back to by-gone days. How short a time it seemed since I was a wanderer upon the rock-bound shores of Juan Fernandez, yet how many strange scenes I had passed through since then – how much of the world I had seen, with its toils, and troubles, and vicissitudes! Here I was now, after years of travel in every clime, among the various nations of the earth, sitting solitary and alone upon an isolated rock on the shores of Finland! Whither was I going? What was the object? Where was the result? When was it to end? Years were creeping over me; I was no longer in the heyday of youth, yet the vague aspirations of boyhood still clung to me – the insatiable craving to see more and more of the world – the undefined hope that I would yet live to be cast away upon a desolate island, and become a worthy disciple of the immortal Robinson Crusoe! Ah me! What a lonesome feeling it is to be a visionary, enthusiastic boy all one’s life, in this practical world of dollars and cents, where other boys are men, and men forget that they ever were young! But this, you say, is all sentimental nonsense. Of course it is. I admit the full folly of such thoughts. It would be a pitiable spectacle indeed to see every body inspired by the vagabond spirit of Robinson Crusoe. No doubt, if you were sitting upon a rock on the Gulf of Finland, my respected Californian friend, you would be hammering off the croppings and trying to discover the indications. You consider that the true philosophy of life – to dig, and delve, and burrow in the ground, and get gold and silver out of it, and suffer rheumatism in your bones and cramps in your stomach, and wear out your life in a practical way, while we visionaries are dreaming sentimental nonsense! But, after all, does the one pay any better than the other in the long run? Will gold or silver make you see farther into a millstone, or give you a better appetite, or put youth and health into your veins, or cause you to sleep more soundly of nights, or prolong your life to an indefinite period beyond the span allotted to the average of mankind? Will you never be convinced of the truth of these inspired words, which can not be repeated too often: As you brought nothing into the world, so you can take nothing out of it?

Come, then, let us be young again, and dash into the blue waters of Finland, and buffet the sparkling brine as it seethes and boils over the rocks! Away with your gold and your silver, and your toils and cares, and let us play Robinson Crusoe and Friday here in this solitary little glen, where “our right there is none to dispute” – unless it may be the Czar of Russia. Off with your shirt, your boots, your drawers, your all, and be for once a genuine savage – be my man Friday, and I’ll teach you how to enjoy life. Ye gods! doesn’t it feel fine – that plunge in the foaming brine! Why, you look like a boiled lobster already; the glow of health is all over you; your eyes sparkle, your skin glistens; you shoot out the salt sea-spray from your nostrils in a manner that would surprise any porpoise; you whoop and you yell like a young devil let loose! Never in the world would I take you to be a hard, money-making, lucre-loving man! Why, my dear Friday, you are a perfect jewel of a savage! I didn’t know it was you, and doubt if you knew it yourself! Isn’t it glorious? I feel a thousand years younger! Don’t you hear me singing,

But the water is rather fresh – considering how much salt there is in it. We had better take a race over the rocks. Run, Friday, for your life. If I catch you, overboard you go into the sea again. Run, you savage, run! Voices? you say, human voices?

Great Heavens! Where are you, Friday? Gone! disappeared behind that projecting ledge of rocks. And here am I, all alone, up to my arm-pits in the water, with a group of Finnish ladies standing there, not a hundred yards off, looking at me! – ay, gazing steadfastly at me, and, what is worse, splitting their sides laughing at my confusion! What in the world is to be done? The water seems to be growing colder and colder. I am chilled through. My jaws begin to chatter. Suppose a shark should seize me by the leg – or a sudden and violent cramp should take possession of me? My gracious! what are those women doing now? Actually seating themselves on the rocks, within ten steps of my clothes, and spreading several packages of bread, cheese, and cakes around them! They are going to enjoy a picnic while I enjoy my bath! I hear their merry voices; I can imagine the general drift of their jokes. How innocently they eat, and drink, and laugh. Possibly they take me for a seal or a walrus! Certainly nothing is visible but my head, on the crown of which, I regret to say, is a bald spot about the size of your hand. It may be very funny to see it dodging up and down among the breakers – but I can’t stand it much longer. Already the spray has wellnigh strangled me; I shiver all over; a horrible presentiment is uppermost in my mind that polypi, and sea-leeches, and shiny jelly-fish are fastening their suckers upon my legs; I jump, and kick, and plunge in an agony of apprehension, while those fair creatures on the rock imagine, no doubt, that I am disporting myself in sheer exuberance of joy. If they only knew that I had been full half an hour in the water before they appeared, there might be some hope of a release; but that does not seem to have entered their heads.

Never in all my experience, reader, was I in such a predicament. This is no fancy sketch. It is true, every word of it. Had the picnickers been old ladies, I might have shut my eyes, and made a break out of the water for my clothes; but three of them, at least, were young, and, worse than that, very pretty! The courage for so daring and monstrous an act was not in me. I felt that it would be easier to die; and yet to die in this way is pretty hard when it comes to a practical test. What the deuce was to be done? I could not speak a word of Finnish, otherwise I might have implored them to retire a few hundred yards and let me get my clothes. With a shirt, or even a pocket-handkerchief, I might have charged upon the enemy; but I had nothing – not even a hat – as a shield against the battery of sparkling eyes that bore down upon me! A thousand expedients flashed through my mind in the extremity of my sufferings. I would slip out of the water on all-fours, and creep over the rocks like a seal, but that would be an extremely ungraceful way of approaching a bevy of strange ladies. Then it occurred to me if I could get hold of a bunch of sea-weeds, it might serve as a temporary substitute for a costume; but the weeds had all drifted away by this time, and not a patch was in sight. Even a large oyster-shell might have afforded some assistance; but who ever heard of oyster-shells in the Gulf of Finland? Nothing remained save to dive down and seize a big rock, detach it from the bottom, and, holding it up before me, make a break for the pile of clothes; yet when I came to consider the preposterous spectacle that a middle-aged man would present in a state of nudity charging full tilt upon a party of ladies, with a big rock in his hands and a gleam of desperation in his eye, the idea seemed too monstrous to be entertained, and I was forced to give it up. The difficulty was becoming really serious. Doubtless it appears very funny to my California friends, but I can assure them it was pretty near death to me. I would have given ten dollars for the poorest cotton shirt that was ever dealt out by an Indian agent to a Reservation Digger; nay, transparent as the blankets are, I might have made one serve my purpose by doubling it three or four times and holding it up front.

All this, however, though very well in its way, did not relieve me from my embarrassing predicament. Something must be done, and that very speedily. I was rapidly wilting under the chilling influence of the water. Ten minutes more would render me a fit subject for a coroner’s inquest. I saw but one alternative: to work my course a few hundred yards up the shore, and then creep out the best way I could, and run for my life till I found some friendly nook among the rocks in which I could conceal myself till these fair Finns took a notion to depart.

Acting upon this idea, I ducked down as low as possible, and crept over the jagged and slippery rocks, in mortal dread all the time that some receding wave would leave me a dripping spectacle for these fair damsels to laugh at; till, bruised and scarified beyond farther endurance, I worked my way to a landing-place, where I paused in a recumbent position – that is to say, on all-fours – to take an observation. They must have perceived something ludicrous in my attitude. A wild scream of laughter saluted my ears. I could stand no more. What little warmth was left in my blood forced itself into my head and face as I sprang to my feet. With a groan of shame and mortification, I took to my heels; and never before, so help me Jupiter! did I run so fast in my life. Scream after scream of laughter followed me! It is impossible for me to conjecture how I looked, but I felt dreadfully destitute of sail as I scudded over the rough pathway that wound around the shore. Blushing, panting, and utterly overwhelmed with conflicting emotions of modesty and despair, I darted behind the friendly shelter of a rock, and inwardly resolved that if ever I went bathing in Finland again, I would at least perform my ablutions in a more appropriate costume than Nature had bestowed upon me.

The next question was, how long were these people going to enjoy themselves at my expense? Was I to be blockaded from my clothes all the rest of the afternoon? I could not, upon any principle of international law, undertake to break the blockade on the ground that it was not effectual, and yet it was pretty hard to do without my cotton. What I had suffered from the cold while in the water was nothing to what I now began to experience from the unobstructed rays of the sun. My skin was rapidly assuming every variety of color supposed to exist in the rainbow, and a painful consciousness possessed me that in half an hour more I would be blistered from head to foot. There was no shade on my side of the rock, and nothing any where in sight that could afford the least protection. Racked with renewed anguish, I peeped out to see if there was any earthly prospect reaching my clothes. Horror upon horror! what were they doing now? Did my eyes deceive me? As sure as fate, they were all quietly undressing themselves! Hats, scarves, parasols and dresses were scattered all around them; there they sat, on the moss-covered rocks, their alabaster necks and limbs glistening in the sun, looking for all the world like a bevy of mermaids, laughing and chattering in the highest glee, perfectly indifferent to my presence! I saw no more. A dizziness came over me. Consternation seized my inmost soul. Drawing back behind the rock. I held my face close up to it and shut both my eyes. Don’t talk to me about courage! Every man is a coward by nature. Of what avail was it that I had killed whales and chased grizzly bears? Here I was now, hiding my face, shutting my eyes, trembling in the hot sun like a man with an ague, both knees knocking together, and my heart ready to pop out of my mouth from abject fear! Strange – wasn’t it? – especially after having made the grand tour of Europe, in many parts of which live men and women are ranked with statuary. What harm is there, after all, in discarding those artificial trappings which disfigure the human form divine? Many a man who looks like an Apollo Belvidere in his natural condition, becomes a very commonplace fellow the moment he steps into his conventional disguise. He is no longer heroic; he may be a very vulgar-looking mortal, not at all calculated to produce classical impressions on any body. His form divine has fallen into the hands of a tailor, who may be neither an artist or a poet. And since we can admire an Apollo Belvidere, why not a Venus de Medici, or, still more, the living, breathing impersonation of beauty buffeting the waves with

“Shapely limb and lubricated joint.”

But, hang it all! though not an ill-shaped man, I don’t flatter myself there was any thing in my personal appearance, as I crouched behind the rock, shutting both eyes as hard as I could, to remind the most enthusiastic artist of the Apollo Belvidere! Nay, the gifted Hawthorne himself could scarcely have made a Marble Faun out of so unpromising a subject. And as for the fair bathers, who by this time were plunging about in the water like naiads, it would of course be impossible for me to say how far they were improved by lack of costume, since I looked in another direction, and kept my eyes faithfully closed from the very beginning. The question now occurred to me, Would I not be justified by the law of nations in breaking the blockade? It was now or never. If they once commenced dressing, farewell to hope! Well, I did it. Heaven only knows how I got through the terrible ordeal. I only remember that desperation gave strength and speed to my limbs, and I ran with incredible velocity. A moment of terrible confusion ensued as I grasped at my scattered habiliments. There came a scream of laughter from the wicked naiads who were sporting in the waves. I fled over the hills – my bundle in my arms – and never once stopped till I reached a small valley about half a mile distant. Breathless, mortified, and bewildered at the oddity of the adventure. I hurriedly dressed, and walked back to town. Arrived at my hotel, I called for a bottle of schnapps, retired to my room, locked the door, and fervently ejaculated, “‘All’s well that ends well!’ Here’s to the ladies of Helsingfors! But if ever you catch me in such a scrape again, my name’s not Browne!”

CHAPTER XXIII.

ABO – FINLAND

I was strongly inclined to spend several weeks in Helsingfors. The bathing is delightful, and the manners and customs of the people are primitive and interesting. My adventure on the sea-shore, as I soon discovered, was nothing uncommon. I mentioned the matter to my landlady – a Finnish woman of very sociable manners, who spoke a little English. I asked her if it was customary for the ladies to dispense with bathing-dresses. She said they generally wore something when they bathed in public, but beyond the limits of the regular bath-houses, at the end of the Botanical Gardens, they seldom troubled themselves about matters of that kind; in fact, they preferred going in without any obstruction, because “they could swim so much better.”

Having procured my passport at the Bureau of the Police, I took passage in a Swedish steamer bound for Abo and Stockholm. Next morning by daylight the steamer arrived from St. Petersburg. I went on board, and in a few hours more the fortifications of Sweaborg were dim in the distance.

The accommodations on board the Swedish steamers are excellent. I took passage in the second cabin, for the sake of economy, and found every thing as clean and comfortable as I could desire. The waiters are polite and attentive, the fare is good, and the company quiet and respectable. The difference in this respect is very striking between first and second class passengers on board of American and Swedish steamers. In the latter there is no rowdyism – no incivility from officers or servants; and, so far as the passengers are concerned, I could not perceive that they were debarred from any of the privileges enjoyed by passengers of the first class. They had the entire range of the vessel, and were treated with the same respect and consideration shown to others who possessed the means of indulgence in a little more style. I have been particularly pleased with this trait in the management of public conveyances throughout Europe. In Sweden and Norway it is especially characteristic. The commonest deck-passenger on board a Swedish or Norwegian steamer is treated with courtesy. Indeed, I have seen instances of care and tenderness toward the poorer classes, whose circumstances compelled them to travel in this way, that I regret to say would excite astonishment in our own democratic country. I can scarcely understand why it is that the captain and officers of a steam-ship on our side of the water consider it their duty to harass passengers who do not pay the highest price with all sorts of vexatious restrictions, and to render their condition as uncomfortable as possible. To be overbearing, insolent, and ungentlemanly seems to be the only aim of these important functionaries, and, so far as my experience goes, they succeed so well in this respect that if they do not actually prove themselves brutes and blackguards during the passage, they are usually rewarded for their forbearance, on reaching the port of destination, by a card of thanks. I have seen no such insolence on the part of officers and slavishness on that of passengers on board of any Swedish or Norwegian steamer, as I have often seen on the Panama and California coast steamers. Yet cards of thanks are not common in Europe. In fact, they would be regarded as a reflection upon the officers rather than an evidence of complimentary appreciation.