Passing through the roughly paved and somewhat dirty streets, past shops full of primitive hardware, groceries which emitted powerful whiffs of salt fish or new leather, bakeries with crisp padlocks of bread in the windows, drinking-houses plentifully supplied with qvass and vodki, and, finally, the one watch-maker, and the vender of paper, pens, and Finnish almanacs, we reached a broad suburban street, whose substantial houses, with their courts and gardens, hinted at the aristocracy of Serdopol.  The inn, with its Swedish sign, was large and comfortable, and a peep into the open windows disclosed as pleasant quarters as a traveller could wish.  A little farther the town ceased, and we found ourselves upon a rough, sloping common, at the top of which stood the church with its neighboring belfry.  It was unmistakably Lutheran in appearance,—­very plain and massive and sober in color, with a steep roof for shedding snow.  The only attempt at ornament was a fanciful shingle-mosaic, but in pattern only, not in color.  Across the common ran a double row of small booths, which had just been erected for the coming fair; and sturdy young fellows from the country, with their rough carts and shaggy ponies, were gathering along the highway, to skirmish a little in advance of their bargains.

The road enticed us onward, into the country.  On our left, a long slope descended to an upper arm of the harbor, the head of which we saw to be near at hand.  The opposite shore was fairly laid out in grain-fields, through which cropped out, here and there, long walls of granite, rising higher and higher towards the west, until they culminated in the round, hard forehead of a lofty hill.  There was no other point within easy reach which promised much of a view; so, rounding the head of the bay, we addressed ourselves to climbing the rocks, somewhat to the surprise of the herd-boys, as they drove their cows into the town to be milked.

Once off the cultivated land, we found the hill a very garden of wild blooms.  Every step and shelf of the rocks was cushioned with tricolored violets, white anemones, and a succulent, moss-like plant with a golden flower.  Higher up there were sheets of fire-red pinks, and on the summit an unbroken carpet of the dwarf whortleberry, with its waxen bells.  Light exhalations seemed to rise from the damp hollows, and drift towards us; but they resolved themselves into swarms of mosquitoes, and would have made the hill-top untenable, had they not been dispersed by a sudden breeze.  We sat down upon a rock and contemplated the widespread panorama.  It was nine o’clock, and the sun, near his setting, cast long gleams of pale light through the clouds, softening the green of the fields and forests where they fell, and turning the moist evening haze into lustrous pearl.  Inlets of the lake here and there crept in between the rocky hills; broad stretches of gently undulating grain-land were dotted with the houses, barns, and clustered stables of the Finnish