Page:Maud, Renée - One year at the Russian court 1904-1905.djvu/29

 CHAPTER II

HE country from Petrograd to Viborg is for the most part like one perpetual garden, the train passes between what is literally a long series of villas and gardens in the midst of silver birch and pine-trees, broken occasionally by an evident attempt to create a new place; then succeeds again a planted solitude; and at last, after a journey of four hours, Viborg—a town of 30,000 inhabitants—is reached.

That planted solitude has since those days become very much built over, I expect, as Finland is a very sought-after summer resort.

Finland—the country of the thousand lakes, or rather one ought to say of the five thousand lakes! My grandmother's land won my heart at once. Monrepos was for me a touching souvenir of her.

It is a well-known show place, with its lovely and hilly woodlands reaching down to the Gulf of Finland, its gorgeous flower-beds and standard orange-trees, where the coast is indented with its pink coloured rocks and in the background are interminable forests of pine and silver beech, where wolves come in winter. In one of the kiosks in the park is a marble bust of the Empress Maria, given by her to my great-grandfather to 2em