Yet in the midst of this Finnish paradise there was a pest as bad as the serpent in Eden. We were nearly devoured by mosquitoes! They beset us behind and before and bit us horribly. With handkerchiefs over our faces, and with bushes to drive them away, we were pursued as if they were starving like the other inhabitants, and they sent in their bills with no more mercy than landlords in Spain. I would not take the place, with all its splendor and natural attractions, for a gift, if it were encumbered with the condition of being obliged to live in it through the summer season. But some people get used to these little plagues. Nature is fond of setting off one thing against another, and it may be that the inhabitants of mosquito regions have some compensating advantages that make these evils a luxury rather than otherwise. They do prevail in the cold climates of the north, as well as in malarious southerly regions, and there is good reason to believe that they are not very troublesome to the settled inhabitants, however savage they are upon strangers. For I have observed in the United States, and within a very few miles of New York, if a man purchases a home, a “Mon Repos” like this we are now visiting, and says to himself, “this is my rest,” he is able to say, in answer to the inquiries of friends as to mosquitoes, “We are not troubled with them at all.” And if the fever and ague has been there through all generations, he is free to declare, “There is nothing of it around us.” From which we infer that mosquitoes and other plagues like them, and the chills, respect the manorial rights of the owners of the soil, and only draw the blood and shake the bones of strangers, who in all ages and countries have been considered as lawful prey. We stood on the shore and saw the sun go down in clouds of glory, and then returned, in the same style in which we came, to our ship. A great amount of freight was to be left and more taken in, and this kept the vessel in such confusion that sleep was quite out of the question. At two o’clock I was sitting at my cabin window writing without a candle, and a carriage came to the wharf with a gentleman and lady to come on board. No one would have thought of its being night to see the arrival. It was difficult to adjust one’s mind to the fact that we had come into such a latitude, that night could be told from day only by looking at your watch.