We scrambled up over the slippery pine needles to the crest of the little eminence on which the church stood, and found ourselves in the most primitive of churchyards. There was no attempt at law or order, for the graves had just been put down between the trees wherever there was room for them. We noticed a painted clock on several of the wooden tombstones, evidently intended to indicate the exact hour at which the person lying under the sod had died. For instance, it would stand at twenty-two minutes to four o'clock, which was the precise moment the dead man expired, carefully noted by the exactitude of the Finns, who are very particular about such matters. In the newspapers, for example, it is stated, "Johanson died, aged 46 years 11 months and 4 days," and this record of the number of days is by no means uncommon. They are a most exact nation.
The _Maaninka_ church, like so many others in Finland, has its important-looking bell-tower standing quite a distance away from the main building. We climbed to the top after some persuasion, and certainly our trouble was repaid by a glorious view.
But, alas! every Finlander has a hobby, and that hobby is that at every point where there is a view of any sort or description, in fact, one might say where there is no view at all, he erects an _Aussichtsturm_. These outlook towers are a bane of existence to a stranger. One goes out to dinner and is taken for a walk round the island. At every conceivable point is an outlook tower, generally only a summer-house, but, alas, there are usually some steps leading to the top which one toils up, and has the fatigue of doing so without any reward, as they are not high enough to afford any better view at the summit than one has at the base.
To go to the top of St. Peter's in Rome, St. Paul's in London, the Isaak Church in Petersburg, the Citadel at Quebec, or the Castle of Chapultepec in Mexico, is worth the fatigue, but to toil up twenty steps on a hot summer's day and clamber down again, to repeat the operation a quarter of a mile farther on, and so _ad lib._, becomes somewhat monotonous, and one begins to wish that every outlook tower in Finland might be banished from the country. Stop, once we ascended an outlook tower that more than rewarded our labour. It was at _Kuopio_, which town we had just left--perhaps the most beautifully situated in all Finland--and as the night when we arrived chanced to be particularly brilliant, the view from the top of that outlook tower will be long treasured in remembrance.