They enjoyed her vivid descriptions of how the snow there was daily shoveled from the pavements, and how when you step on what remains it screams: "A hard winter! A hard winter!"
"We haven't gone in for as much ice yachting as usual," she remarked, rather sadly, the children thought. "The times are too unsettled."
"Tell us about the yachting," urged Maja, seeing the look of interest in Juhani's face, and knowing his slowness in asking for what he wanted.
"I know nothing more thrilling," the aunt returned, smiling, "than lying flat on your stomach on an ice yacht in motion. The yacht may take little leaps so that at times it seems to you as if it were about to fly. Then you rush madly at something and prepare yourself surely for a smash, but just in time the yacht swerves and you are safe to fly some more. In a sense you do fly, for when the wind is strong the yacht is sometimes lifted high into the air. When it comes down you feel as if the world were coming to an end. It would have been fine for ice yachting this year, for we had black ice."
"I know," broke in Juhani unexpectedly. "It is when the ice forms before snow falls."
His aunt nodded. "Yes; then the water looks like a mirror and it is much smoother than when covered with snow."
"Did you come direct from Helsingfors?" asked Lilja after a pause.
"No," replied the aunt. "I had to go first to Viborg." And she described to them the famous Saima Canal, one of the many canals of the country which starts from there. It is built of Finnish granite and took eleven years to complete. "It goes," she said, "to Saima Lake, called the lake of a thousand islands, the most important lake of Finland. This lake is about three hundred feet above the sea level, so that the vessels on the canal have to be raised by locks. There are at least twenty-eight of these. I once saw three steamers on it and they looked as if they were walking up stairs. We mustn't forget that this canal is one of the good things that we owe to the Russians. It probably would not have been constructed but for the interest of Tzar Nicolas I, during whose reign it was begun. Viborg seems to be made up of Russian soldiers, which of course is no wonder, since it is the nearest town to the Russian frontier."