As evening drew on smoke rose from the proximity of the homesteads, and we wondered what it could be, for there are never any trees near the houses.
These are the cow-fires, lighted when the animals come to be milked. The poor creatures are so pestered and tormented by gnats and flies--of which Finland has more than her share--that fires are kindled towards evening, a dozen in one field sometimes, where they are to be milked, to keep the torments away. The cows are wonderfully clever, they know the value of the fires, and all huddle close up to them, glad of the restful reprieve, after the worry they have endured all day. Poor patient beasts, there they stand, chewing the cud, first with one side of their body turned towards the flames and then the other, the filmy smoke, the glow of the fire and the rays of the sunlight, hiding and showing distinctly by turns the girls and their kine. The dairymaids come with their stools to milk their soft-eyed friends, and on blazing hot summer evenings they all sit closely huddled round the fires together.
These milkmaids have some strange superstitions still lurking in their breasts, and the juice of the big birch tree is sometimes given to cows to make them yield better butter.
_Lapinlahti_ is a typical Finnish village, and had at least one newspaper of its own, so advanced were the folk, even at the time of my first visit.
Outside the little post-station we were much amused to read on a board "528 kilos. to St. Petersburg, 470 kilos. to Uleåborg." But we were more amazed on our return from a ramble, prepared to grumble that the meal ordered an hour before was not ready, when the host walked into the room, and, making a most polite bow, said in excellent English--
"Certainly. I think I ought to after doing so for sixteen years."
We were immensely surprised. Who could have expected to find in the interior of Finland a peasant landlord who was also an English linguist? He seemed even more delighted to see us, than we were to have an opportunity of learning something concerning the country from one speaking our own tongue so perfectly, for it is a little difficult to unravel intricate matters when the intermediary is a Swedish-speaking Finlander, who has to translate what the peasant says into French or German for your information, you again retranslating it into English for your own purposes.