The Finnish peasantry are at all seasons busily em ployed in active labour ; and even in the depth of winter find abundance of employment both in the house and abroad. Within, they are engaged in making nets, con structing cart wheels, forming faggots for fuel, or thresh ing their corn ; and out of doors, they cut down timber, and easily drag over the ice or snow such enormous trunks as they could scarcely be able to move in summer. Fish ing and hunting may be considered as their necessary avo cations, rather than voluntary amusements. In fishing with hooks, they scour over the ice in long wooden pat tens, pushing themselves along with incredible velocity, by means of a pole which they hold in their hands; and when they have reached the place where they intend to fish, they spread a triangular sail to shelter them from the wind, perforate the ice with a chisel, plunge their line into the sea to the depth of about 30 feet, and are sometimes obliged to continue stirring the surface of the water to prevent it from freezing. In fishing with nets, they make two openings in the ice, and by means of ropes and long poles pass the nets from the one to the other, which they afterwards draw out with great labour. In autumn, when the frost begins to set in, and the ice is most transparent, the fisherman courses along the rivers with a wooden club or mallet in his hand ; and when he observes a fish under the ice in shallow water, he strikes a violent blow perpen dicularly above it, which at once breaks the ice and stuns the fish, so that he easily siezes it with an instrument made for the purpose. In hunting the seals, they take post in the neighbourhood of their haunts, behind a mass of ice, and wait till one of them comes out of the water. It fre quently happens, that the hole in the ice by which he as cends is frozen over almost instantaneously ; and the hun ters then fall upon him, before he has time to make a new aperture with his breath, or at least before he can reach the opening, should it still be passable. In these extremi ties the animal makes a desperate resistance, seizing the clubs with his teeth, and attempting to reach the assailant ; but the slowness of his motions renders his efforts unavail ing, and he is soon despatched without much risk. The Finlanders' mode of hunting the bear requires a greater degree of intrepidity and presence of mind. Instead of a musket, which might be injured by the damp, and prove a very uncertain weapon, the hunter uses an iron lance fixed at the end of a pole, and having a cross bar about a foot distant from the point. When the bear has been irri tated to rush from his den, and is rearing himself on his hind legs to seize his daring antagonist, the peasant draw ing back the iron lance close to his breast, so as to con ceal the length of his weapon, and render the animal less watchful against its stroke, advances boldly within arm's length of the bear, and plunges the point into his heart. The cross bar prevents the lance from passing through the body, keeps the animal from reaching the hunter with his paws, and serves to throw him on his back, while the wounded bear hastens his own death by holding the wea pon fast, and pressing it more deeply into the wound. A still more hazardous enterprise is the seal hunting in the spring, after the frozen sea breaks up, and the ice floats in shoals upon the surface. Four or five persons set sail in an open boat with one small mast; and expose them selves during the space of a month or more, and in the most unfavourable circumstances, to all the dangers of the ocean. In this pursuit their little bark is continually placed between masses of ice, which threaten to crush it to pieces; and in order to reach the seals, they must creep along the floating shoals, killing them as they repose upon the ice. During the same season they hunt the squirrel, which they kill with a blunt wooden arrow, shot from a cross bow, that they may not injure the skin. The bow used in this sport is of a very ancient construction, extremely hea vy, and requiring great strength to bend it, even with the assistance of a thong. The peasantry are remarkably dex terous both in the use of this bow and of the fowling-piece, loading the latter always with ball, and rarely missing the smallest bird. They employ for this purpose a kind of rifle gun with a narrow bore, which requires but a very small charge, and yet carries to a considerable distance. The winter also is the principal season of traffic ; and all the great fairs are held in Finland and Sweden in that time of the year, in consequence of the facility of carrying goods over the ice, and travelling in sledges on the snow. The peasants on these occasions frequently undertake jour nies of three or four hundred English miles, carrying along with them whatever articles they have for sale. In Fin land, the sledges are very narrow, containing only one per son, and drawn by a single horse ; and the roads are deep ruts formed by the successive passage of these vehicles, thus admitting none of a larger size than what are gene rally used in the country. The circumstance of being overturned is rarely productive of any serious conse quences; and the dangers attending the traveller arise chiefly from those parts of the rivers or lakes where the ice is insufficient to support the weight. Excepting the bear, which rarely comes from his den to attack the inha bitants, until he is first provoked, the only other savage creatures in the country are wolves ; and those, even when starving, will not venture singly to assail the passenger.
When assembled, however, in herds, and impelled by fa mine, they sometimes rush upon the horses in the sledges; and should the traveller be overturned and left upon the road, he must fall a prey to their ferocity.
Many strange and sometimes indelicate customs prevail among the inhabitants, some of which will come more pro perly to be noticed under SWEDEN, as being common to both countries, and others of them under LAPLAND, where these ancient peculiarities have suffered least change. A Finlander, when about to form a matrimonial connection, commissions some old women to make known his propo sals to the object of his affections, and at the same time sending a present of a handkerchief, ribband, or piece of money. The messenger waits upon the young woman while undressing at night, and after dwelling on the praise of the lover, slips his gift into the fair one's bosom. If the present is retained, the young people consider themselves as mutually engaged, and nothing but the marriage cere mony is wanting. But if the present be returned, this in dicates a refusal, which may nevertheless yield to a second proposal, unless the young woman, instead of returning the gift with her hands, suffers it to drop to the ground, which is counted a positive token of decided rejection. At the marriage, one of the friends or neighbours, with the orator or speaker, does the honours of the feast, who gene rally also recites verses, or makes them extempore, suita ble to the occasion ; and, on the day following, after ad dressing some advices to the married couple, he strikes the woman repeatedly round the body with the husband's breeches, commanding her to be fruitful, and to furnish him with heirs of his own body. In some places, a prac tice resembling the bundling of the Americans, is said to exist. Both in the towns, and among the peasantry of Finland, a stranger experiences the utmost kindness and hospitality. He is always treated as the first person in the company, and every endeavour is made to consult his taste and gratify his feelings. Even among the principal inha bitants of the towns, a strange and rather startling mode of testifying satisfaction with a visitor is practised by the ladies, who, as soon as the entertainment is concluded, give him a slap upon the back when he is least expecting it; and the more forcible the application of the hand, the stronger is the declaration of good will. The peasants dis play great disinterestedness in their services to strangers, and can seldom be induced, without considerable importu nity, to accept a pecuniary remuneration for any occa sional assistance, which they may have rendered. See Coxe's Travels in Russia, &c. ; Acerbi's Travels in Swe den, ; Wraxal's Tour round the Baltic; Swinton's Travels into Norway, &c. ; Clarke's Travels, vol. i. (q) FIRE-EseArcs, are machines for enabling persons to descend from the windows of a house when it is on fire, and when the stair-case and passages are so filled with the flame or smoke, as to prevent a retreat by the ordina ry avenues : Some of these machines are contrived to con vey down valuable goods as well as people.
A person who is awakened from a profound sleep by the flames of a fire, which has already made such progress as to cut off all retreat, has no other alternative than leap ing from a window, perhaps of great height, or perish ing by the flames. This is a situation so dreadful, as to demand every exertion of ingenuity, and every regulation of the police, which can contribute to the relief of the sufferer. Frequently as this tragedy is repeated in Lon-• don, every new instance makes a lively impression on the public mind, and rarely fails to give rise to the inven tion of some new fire-escape ; yet still we do not find airy of these adopted so generally, as to remedy the evil. This may be owing, either to the inefficiency of the contrivances, or to the neglect of the magistracy to provide a proper number.
Machines for this purpose are of two different kinds, first, those which are intended to operate from the street below, and can be quickly erected to communicate with any window : Of this kind are ladders, and poles with pul lies and ropes to draw up a basket, also a variety of cu rious and complicated machines or elevators ; of course all such machines must be kept at the public expence, for the service of a whole parish, in the same manner as fire-engines, and must be made to remove very readily. The other kinds of fire-escapes are those which can be fixed to a window, and allow the unfortunate sufferer to descend safely into the street. Machines of this kind are intended to be kept in the bed-rooms of the house ; and each house must be provided with one at least, to render the contrivance generally effective. Both kinds have their inconveniences ; the first, from the difficulty of conveying them with dispatch from the places where they are depo sited, to the situation where they are to act : This objec tion they have in common with lire-engines ; but it is here more sensibly felt, because the fire-escapes which have been made, arc but very few hi number; nor can it in deed be expected that they will be generally provided, unless parishes were obliged by law to keep fire-escapes as well as fire-engines, and in this case the same regula tions might be applied to both.