The Sun.
London, England, 1854-08-31 00:00:00

THE BALTIC.

COPENHAGEN, Aug. 25.—English transports con-
tinue to pass on their way to the fleet and army.
A French transport, the Courrier de Marseille,
with provisions for the Aland division, has stranded
on the southern shore of Refshorn, on the coast of
West Jutland. The crew (eight men) were saved
by eleven men jumping into the life-boat, and
lashing out to the brig, after an attempt to send a
:.ocket line had failed, the distance from the shore
being too great. She is now discharging. A mes-
4age has been sent to the French consul in Elsinore
For a steamer, and it is hoped she may yet be got
off. As yet she has sproh-• no leak.

THE ISLES t,F ALAND.
The following extracts of an article on the isles
oe Aland, inserted in the itioniteur, would seem to
in licate that the allies do not intend to occupy
hose islands :
" The accounts hitherto published respecting the rigour
it the winter in the islands of Aland fall short of the
ruth. Every year, from the first days of November to
..he end of April, the climate is intensely cold, the
;entigrade thermometer ranging from 20 degrees to 25
legrees, and rising often to 30 degrees. The sea is.
frozen over, and the communications on the ice with Fin-
iand are very active. The Russian officers taken pri-
soners at Bomarsund declared to us that they had often
travelled in sledges from Aland to St. Petersburg, en-
camping at night on the ice, and there are still in the
:stand several old men who perfectly recollect having
seen in 1809 a corps of Russian cavalry of 15,000 men
coming from Finland and crossing the Gulf of Both-
eia to Aland on the ice. The climate is so rigorous
n winter that one-third of the soldiers of the gar-
rison of Botnarsund are renewed yearly, and the
eiscriptions on the tombs of the military cemetery
uruve that the mortality in that season is very
.treat. It had of late assumed such an extension
hat the Russian Government had been obliged to
,rder the construction of a military hospital as spacious
is the fortress itself. The rigour of the cold is in-
oreased by violent north-westerly winds, which fre-
quently blow in winter during several consecutive
.lays, and render it completely uninhabitable for fo-
eigners. No means exist to neutralise these attnos-
Aerie influences. The island is thinly peopled. It
does not contain a single town, and the few vilges scat-
tered here and there offer no resources. Russia. ever
preoccupied with her future aggrandisement, had re-
olved to build a military town adapted to the climate,
Lnd the plan of which had been approved by a recent
ukase. The town was to be situate within the line of
the forts, and to offer some analogy with Sebastopol,
but on a larger scale. While the Finnish part of the
Gulf of Bothnia invariably freezes every year, the por-
tion on the side of Sweden is seldom entirely covered
with ice. This circutestance was favourable to Russsia,
which during the six months' winter was thus in direct
communication with her possessions of Aland. The
climate of the country is warm in summer. During the
month of August the thermometer often rises to 20 deg.
and 25 deg. (centigrade), hut the evenings and nights
are generally cool. The accounts of the productions of
those islands, published by the press, are completely
erroneous. In their present condition they cannot even
feed their inhabitants. They offer no resource for an
army or a fleet. They produce fresh-water fish in small
quantity, game is scarce, and the different species of
cattle are of a diminutive size, and not abundant. The
Russian troops drew all their provisions from St.
Petersburg."