or some one of the non-seagoing families of _Salmonidæ_.
Full as the Voksa is of fish, and hard as my friend C. G. and I
worked, both from the platforms with fly and from boat with phantoms
of every shape and size likely to attract the monsters down in the
depths beneath us, it was all in vain--or nearly in vain. We did,
indeed, catch a few fish, but nothing very large, and hardly more than
enough to keep us well supplied with toothsome, dainty fare for our
own table. We offered those fish the choicest delicacies that London
makers could produce; we tempted them with phantoms so fascinating
that one would suppose any fish of decently discriminative powers
would rise from its moist bed and come out, at night, to feed upon
them as they lay on the table within the very house. We dangled these
tempting morsels over the very spots where they were known to lie; but
for two days did these Voksa monsters sulk and turn their faces
steadfastly from us. There was thunder in the air; that, we concluded,
was the mischief; perhaps during Sunday the storm would break. We
would try them again on Monday, and meanwhile we would accept J. H.'s
hospitable invitation and drive over to spend Sunday with him at his
lovely home at Lappin-Haru (the Ridge, or the District, of the Lapps).
Those Lapps who chose this spot for their habitation showed a wise
discrimination and a taste for natural beauty of scene and site which
one would scarcely look for in that unromantic tribe. Lappin-Haru
overlooks the Voksa at one of its loveliest bends; a truly noble
river, flowing through dense forests and by the side of tidy,
cultivated fields; deep and majestic and silent at this corner, and
bursting into rippling laughter at that; a river that bears up the
swimmer as buoyantly and as securely as the sea, so strong and so full
and ample is the beautiful, bright, clear flood of it. My friend J.
H.--the representative in St. Petersburg of a family as well known and
as widely respected in Russia as it is in England--has built him a
house in this corner of the Voksa Paradise, and a splendid house it
is. And though in the very wilds of Finland, yet he is in
communication with all centres of civilisation by means of the
telephone; indeed, you can even speak to him from the island club at
Varpa-Saari, a dozen miles away; while the Imatra trains stop for
passengers within a mile of his front door. So quickly do the
enlightened Finns avail themselves of the discoveries of science that
the southern portion of their province is covered with a network of
telephones, and no one in town or country dreams of being without this
useful adjunct to civilised comfort.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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