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thought to exist, not only for the sake of the mails,
but also for the export, especially of butter, to England.
By means of two powerful ice-breakers, bought for
700,000 and 1¼ million marks, it is now possible to
keep Hangö open the whole winter, while another
icebreaker accomplishes the same work at Åbo.
The old Swedish provincial laws made it the duty
of the landholders of the villages to build bridges or
to keep ferries, as well as to open up roads which were
of importance to the whole country or to the härad,
the parishes, the mills, or finally to their own cattle.
They had to contribute according to the value of their
land. In a country so thinly populated and of such
large extent as Finland the only roads were, however,
for a long time the waterways during the summer and
the snow during the winter. Parliaments and all
other public assemblies were always held near the
sea. Even in the south public messages were sent
during the winter by runners on Scandinavian
snowshoes or “ski.” Later on, high roads were made
which, like the railways in modern times, followed
the long terminal moraines which, on account of their
regular character and stony ground, were easily
transformed into roads. In the middle of the sixteenth
century about 2000 kilometres of roads were perhaps
in existence, but owing to the subsequent wars it was
a long time before others were constructed. Even in
the beginning of the nineteenth century the country
only had about 10,000 kilometres of roads. Distant
districts had often nothing but horse paths as a means
of communication with the outer world, and on the
lakes and rivers communication by boat is still often
used instead of by road. The people moved, and
move sometimes still in the far interior, in the same
manner as the Indians in Western America, where
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