About the trip to Olonets gubernia |
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July 22-25 1834 Olonets is a very poor town. There are many Karelians among its inhabitants and just after the town the real Karelia begins. We were told that this nation is very rude and wicked. But up to Petrozavodsk we met cordial and obliging people. They live very neat. The floors and benches in their homes are clean, and one can use samovars and cups safely. And we could not find a cockroach. Local Karelian are rather well-to-do. They make living by different trades, using for connection water ways, that are main connection for this rather uninhabited land. Yet they say that in Pudozh and Povenets uezds people are living very poor, some even have to add bark powder to their food. Karelians have their own language, but they all rather fluent in Russian. Their language is pleasant, having lot of vowels. . . . Bigger part of Petrozavodsk uezd inhabited by Karelians belonging to the cast-iron mills. They possess about twenty-two thousands of peasants.
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