Page:Mrs. Alec Tweedie - Through Finland in Carts (1897).pdf/22

Rh blue-cloth coat fastening down the side, which at the waist is pleated on to the upper part in great fat folds more than an inch wide, so that from behind he almost looks like a Scheveningen fishwife; while, if he be not fat enough for fashionable requirements, he wears an additional pillow before and behind, and ties a light girdle round his waist to keep his dress in place.

All this strange beauty can be admired at a very cheap rate, for passengers are able to drive to any part of the town for fifty pennid, equal to fivepence in English money. These coachmen, about eighty inches in girth, fascinated us; they were so fat and so round, so packed in padding that on hot days they went to sleep sitting bolt upright on their box, their inside pillows and outside pleats forming their only and sufficient support. It was a funny sight to see half a dozen Isvoschtschiks in a row, the men sound asleep, their arms folded, and their heads resting on their manly chests, in this case cuirassed with a feathery pillow!

Over the horses' withers, drawing these Finnish carriages, are those strange wooden hoops so familiar on the Russian droschky, but perhaps most extraordinary of all are the strong shafts fixed inside the wheels, while the traces from the collar are secured to the axle itself outside the wheel! That seemed a novelty to our mind anyway, and reminded us of the old riddle, "What is the difference between an inside Irish car and an outside Irish car?" "The former has the wheels outside, the latter has the wheels inside."

Queer carts on two wheels were drawn up along the quay to bear the passengers' luggage to its destination, but stopdo not imagine every one rushes and tears about in Finland, and that a few minutes sufficed to clear the decks and quay. Far from it; we were among a Northern people proverbially as dilatory and slow as any Southern nation, for in the extreme North as in the extreme South time is not money,nay, more than that, time waits on every man.

Therefore from the bridge of our steamer we heard much talking in strange tongues, we saw much movement of