And in an hour we are there, floating on Voksa's white bosom, propelled softly hither and thither as our boatmen think best; for these men know where the huge silver Voksa and Saima trout most do congregate, and the charm and wonder of the river and of the night are nothing to them so long as some big ten or fifteen pounder can be induced to accept the invitation our cruel blue minnows hold out to them. These superb fish are, so far as I can make out, of three kinds. First, great silvery fellows with bright red spots, for all the world like overgrown brothers of the little river trout. Then there are darker coloured fish, of a golden brown hue, with spots less brightly accentuated, and, I think, larger heads. Of these two kinds the former is the handsomer fish, but both are splendid specimens, and are caught up to twenty-four pounds in weight, C. G. having taken the record in this respect. The third specimen I saw was a fish which I should have called a salmon, but, I believe, erroneously. The Finns have a simple rule. To them all fish over five pounds in weight are "Lochi," salmon (German, Lachs; Russian, Lososino). Now there are plenty of salmon in the Neva, and therefore in Lake Ladoga also; and the reader might suppose that, since the Voksa flows into the Ladoga, there may be salmon in the Voksa just as well as in Ladoga itself. So there may, in the lower parts of the river, but between Ladoga and Saima Lakes there is a barrier, known as the Imatra Falls, which must surely be an insurmountable obstacle to the most enterprising of salmon. The Voksa is a broad, generous, full-flowing river, of three hundred yards in width, which is suddenly compelled at Imatra to compress itself into a narrow gorge of scarcely twenty yards across, and to pass through this as best it can for a distance of a couple of hundred yards or so, after which it is free once more to open itself out to its former wealth of elbow-room. The reader may imagine with how much protest and clamour the surprised and tortured waters of the proud river perform this sudden act of self-compression. Roaring and hissing with rage, they pile themselves mountain high in an instant, and sweep down the moderate incline in a furious phalanx of angry wave-warriors, dashing from one rocky side of the gorge to the other, diving, rearing, whirling, plunging, hurling angry hisses of spray to this side and that, and at the foot of the narrow torture-chamber standing up in mighty water-columns and twisting round to face the rock-walls that have confined them, as though they half thought of turning again and rending them ere they depart once more upon their course in unimpeded freedom and gradually regained calm and majesty. The very idea of any salmon mounting in safety such a whirling, battling, irresistible fury of waters as Imatra is surely outrageous. There cannot be salmon above Imatra. The salmon-like lochi must be a salmon trout, or a lake trout,