Thence to Imatra is not far, and from Imatra to Varpa-Saari is a short drive of three miles or so, past the renowned "falls," about which I shall have more to say later. My friend and I accomplish this distance luxuriously in a spring cart, the commissariat following in a second vehicle. The roads in Finland are not like the roads in Russia. The Finnish roads are civilised, and may be driven upon without fatal results. It was past eleven now, of a glorious July night, and in the white northern twilight, which is nearly daylight, we cantered up to the riverside and drew up at the spot where a landing stage has been made, communicating by means of an overhead wire over the Voksa with the island in mid-stream. The house is upon the island, and from the wire, at the island end, depends a bell. A tug at our end sets this bell clanging and a dog barking, destroying the calm majesty of the night in an instant, and causing dogs in all directions, far and near, to respond to the canine voice from mid-river in sleepy, querulous accents, as though barking were a terrible bore, but must be done out of conscientious motives. While we wait for the boat which is to take us across we hear ourselves hailed in English from some point hidden in the midnight mystery of the river, and when our eyes have located the sound we discover two boats swimming silently side by side, looking all one piece with the water, mystic, wonderful! It is J. H. and E. H., who have driven over from their lovely summer home a few miles below Imatra for a night's fishing in the Varpa waters. Slowly the two boats approach--it seems a sin to murder the marvel of the stillness by speaking--like two swans they swim towards us in the white twilight. Are we awake, and is all this really happening, or are these the creatures of a sleep-picture, and the witchery of the midnight Voksa a mere dream of unreal delight? The winding of two reels and C. G.'s hearty enquiry as to "what sport" has been enjoyed by these two midnight fishers put to flight all ideas of the unreality of things, and in a very few minutes we are each seated in a boat and crossing the gleaming, rippling, hurrying Voksa towards the little island which is to be our home for the next three days. As we reach the landing-stage at the island we find a sleepy Finn fisherman just preparing a boat, in response to our bell-summons, to take us across; but our friends have saved him this trouble. They land us, and away they float again, the two light craft moving noiselessly over the broad river propelled by the fisherman-Finn in the bows, and in the dim and mysterious distance we can hear the soft _crake_, _crake_ of their reels as the lines are let out once more after having been wound in in compliment to ourselves. Before we are out of hearing there is a _whirr_, and we know that the phantom of one of them has found a billet.