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After that Bohun asked Jerry questions. But Jerry refused to give himself away. "I don't know," he said, "I've forgotten it all. I don't suppose I ever did know much about it." At Haparanda, most unfortunately, Bohun was insulted.
So it was decided to my great joy that we should travel all the way round by land, through Sweden, through a little bit of Lapland, just touching the Arctic Circle, through Finland and so to Petrograd. The thought of the places we had to go through thrilled me to the core Karungi, Haparanda, Lapptrask, Torneo the very names are as honey to the lips.
Sundswall, Umea, Lulea, and Haparanda are the principal places of exportation on the eastern shore, and Gottenburg on the west. The fisheries are also an important branch of industry, and large quantities of stromung and herrings are exported. Salmon abound in the rivers, and the lakes and mountain streams furnish a very fine quality of trout.
The hillocks of snow were swept from where they stood and new hillocks were made in other places. When I went out the wind almost took me off my feet. I found that my friends in Haparanda were right. The Lapp costume is well adapted for cold weather.
Beyond Pello, where we stopped to "fire up," our road lay mostly on the Russian side. While crossing the Torneå at sunset, we met a drove of seventy or eighty reindeer, in charge of a dozen Lapps, who were bringing a cargo from Haparanda. We were obliged to turn off the road and wait until they had passed.
We had taken the precaution of getting the Russian visé, together with a small stock of roubles, at Stockholm, but found that it was quite unnecessary. No passport is required for entering Torneå, or travelling on the Russian side of the frontier. Trusting to luck, which is about the best plan after all, we started from Haparanda at noon, on the 5th of January.
Torneå is a plain Swedish town, more compactly built than Haparanda, yet scarcely larger. The old church is rather picturesque, and there were some tolerable houses, which appeared to be government buildings, but the only things particularly Russian which we noticed were a Cossack sentry, whose purple face showed that he was nearly frozen, and a guide-post with "150 versts to Uleaborg" upon it.
We had snug quarters in Haparanda, and our detention was therefore by no means irksome. A large room, carpeted, protected from the outer cold by double windows, and heated by an immense Russian stove, was allotted to us.
It has chosen sixteen stations, chiefly between Haparanda and Strömstad, where daily observations are made and recorded on the height of the sea. This is the great point to be determined; hitherto, it has been left too much to chance, or to the attention of casual travellers.
Everyone is depressed and everyone longs to be out of Petrograd. To-day we hear that the Swedes have closed the Haparanda line, and Archangel is frozen, so here we are. Now I have got to work at the hospital. There are 25,000 amputation cases in Petrograd. The men at my hospital are mostly convalescent, but, of course, their wounds require dressing.
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