A large crowd of people was standing at the wharf to see the steamer, to greet friends expected, and to hear the news. They were quiet, orderly, and well-looking. There was no rush to the gangway, no pulling and hauling to get on, or get baggage and passengers, though there were hundreds waiting for any kind of a job by which a little money could be made. The hotel—the Society House, as it is called—is close by the landing, and affords all the substantial comforts a traveller requires. The old castle, historic, romantic, and famous, is in full view; a massive stone tower on which the storms of centuries, in war and peace, have spent their fury. The streets of the town are wide and the houses low, and one looks in vain for the appearances of a city that was founded by Eric the Saint, who reigned from 1157 to 1160, the time when the Sun of Christianity first softened the rigor of this northern clime. The castle was founded then, and for long centuries held in check the Russians who sought the conquest of Finland. The cathedral has been an object of intense interest for ages past, as the first monument of Christianity in this region, and the burial-place of the most illustrious persons in the history of the country. One of the tombs bears the name of Catharine Monsdotter, who was taken from humble life and married to the King of Sweden, and by one of those strange reverses, now ceasing to be strange, she returned to Finland and died in obscurity, and her husband perished in prison. Her remains repose among queens and princes, but she finds no compensation in this for the loss of a diadem. Two white marble statues, life-size, stand on a sarcophagus in one of the chapels, over the dust of a man and wife who were celebrated for their wealth and noble birth, having the blood of kings; and the statue of the wife is even now decked (not adorned) with necklace and bracelets,—gaudy jewelry indeed to garnish a whited sepulchre. In 1827 an awful conflagration swept over this city of only 20,000 inhabitants, and consumed two-thirds of all the houses in it; the inside of the cathedral was destroyed, the university and its great library, and the chief public edifices fell a prey to the flames, and the town will never recover from the disaster. Its university was removed to Helsingfors, where we have already visited it. Its trade is now of no account. The interior of the country furnishes little or nothing for export, and the glory of Abo—for it once had some glory—is departed for ever.