Chapter IX: Part 9

There is a peculiarity about the coast of Sweden; it is said to have two coasts, an inner and an outer one, the latter being a fringe of islets, so numerous that no map or chart can mark them. It is marvellous how vessels make their way through this labyrinth. If you leave Calmar in the evening, you find yourself the next morning in the thick of this _Skargard_, or reef defence. At first the scene is very desolate; the rocks are barren, and the only sign of life the lonely house of a pilot, round which the sea-birds were screaming in their whirling flight.

When about five hours' distance from Stockholm the scene changes; the barren desolation gives place to wooded islets clothed with the most exquisite vegetation. The beauty of a veritable fairy-land surrounds you. You are in the midst of floating groves and gardens. It is quite unlike any other scenery that I know in Europe; it is not like a lake or river, for there is no expanse of water. The steamer threads its way among a crowd of islands; you could sometimes touch land with a boat-hook. The character of the islets is most varied; at one moment you pass a tiny floating meadow enamelled with flowers, whose sweet scent is wafted in every zephyr; on the other side is a grotesque grotto, or the semblance of a ruin, shaded by the graceful birch-trees that group themselves together. Another time you pass a longer island, with its belt of dark firs, intersected with miniature fjords and little sanded bays. No pencil could do justice to the loveliness of this changing scene.

Approaching the capital, the islands are more extensive and numerous; pretty villas are dotted about the woods, and you see terraced gardens and well-kept lawns. It was market-day when we arrived, and it was very picturesque to see the boats laden with fruit, vegetables, and other necessaries of life proceeding on their way. Each house, or cottage, sent out its messenger boat to make purchases at the floating market, and the scene was very animated and amusing. In another half-hour we were passing the superb deer park of Stockholm, and then we were under the sentinel forts of the capital, and directly afterwards by the side of the busy quay. The first sight of the "Venice of the North" pleased us more than the far-famed Queen of the Adriatic, that city of souvenirs that can hardly be seen by the "light of common day."

Seen from the Kungsholmen, Stockholm looks like a city floating on the sea, especially when the image of all this crowd of churches, palaces, and towers is reflected in the blue mirror of the calm, tideless waters.

It is the fashion to admire the Royal Palace, built on the highest of the three islands of Stockholm, but it has too much the appearance of a vast barrack. It was completed in 1753, from a design of Count Tessin, a Swedish architect of renown. It seems to want towers, or irregularities of some sort, to break the painfully straight lines of this mass of building.

The interior bears a strong family likeness to every other palace in Europe. The upholsterer is decidedly the presiding genius in Royal apartments, where dazzling chandeliers, rich brocades, and oppressive gilding are more or less the properties of all alike. In Paris they vary the scene by turning the royal or imperial upholstery out of the window, from time to time, and making a bonfire of the same for patriotic reasons.

However, in the Royal Palace of Stockholm we did light upon some individual belongings,--some instances of characteristic taste. In the picture-gallery there was, at the time of our visit, an unfinished painting, from the pencil of the late King Carl. It stands on the easel, just as the master's hand had left it, a few months only before he passed away, in the prime of life and of popularity. The scene selected by the royal artist is one of those forest-fringed lakes of Dalecarlia, with a lovely and enticing vista of green valley and distant waterfall. The solemn aspect of the pine-woods, bathed in the after-glow of the delicious northern sunset, is well given in this picture, breathing forth something of that mingling of mystery, beauty, and gloom which characterizes the ancient mythology of the land. One might quote the king's own lines:

"Everywhere we found in Nature
Spirits fitted to interpret
Saga tales of Sweden's childhood."

[Our traveller here describes her visits to the scientific and
educational institutions of Stockholm, and gives some statistics
which we may safely omit.]

However, this is not quite the place for tabulating facts; for are we not on a holiday trip? We English have an almost incurable habit of trying to acquire useful information while _en voyage_. If a man goes up a mountain, instead of enjoying the fresh air and exercise, he must needs go armed with scientific apparatus enough to start a government laboratory. Now, in Stockholm you may really enjoy yourself thoroughly if you only keep clear of museums and learned institutes, those traps for the unsuspecting holiday-maker, who, before he is aware, finds himself suffering from a surfeit of useful knowledge. Don't look at "Murray" or "Baedeker," but just allow yourself to go with the tide in this pleasure-loving city. In the forenoon one must eat ices in the delicious little café called the Strömparterre. It is a garden by the water-side, and, though quite in the centre of the town, bright with a profusion of flowers and waving trees. Here you may sit and watch the little steamers coming and going every few minutes from the Djurgárd Park. The waters are alive with these boats, and with other craft, for the locomotion of the city is mostly conducted by water. One can go anywhere and everywhere, it would seem, for a few ocre, and remember there are a hundred ocre in a riksdollar, and a riksdollar is about thirteen pence of our money.

One of the first of many pleasant excursions that we made was to Mariefred and the royal castle of Gripsholm. This interesting place is on the south side of the Mälar Lake. The steamer from Stockholm takes about three hours, and the voyage gives one an opportunity of seeing some of the prettiest scenery in the environs of the capital. The deep fjords, the fairy islands, the well-wooded banks of the Mälar Lake, present an ever-changing combination of picturesque objects. Conspicuous among the rest is the high rock of Kungshatt, where stands a pole with a hat, to keep alive the story of some king of old, who jumped on horseback from this giddy summit into the water below, when pursued by enemies, and only suffered the inconvenience of losing his hat. What a habit this must have been in the old times! for one hardly ever sees a nasty bit of rock with an ugly chasm yawning beneath, that you don't hear of some ill-advised persons taking the leap either for love or hate....

The Castle of Gripsholm was erected in the twelfth century by Bo Jonsson Grip, a certain Croesus of those days; in fact, he was the most powerful noble in the land, and was selected by Alberta of Mecklenburg to be his "all-powerful helper," for then as now the Swedes hated the Germans. The Rhyming Chronicler of the time says that Bo Jonsson "ruled the land with a glance of his eye." He had a bad habit, however, of using his sword as well as his eye, for history tells us how he followed his foe, knight Karl Nilsson, into the church of the Franciscans at Stockholm, and hacked him to pieces before the high altar!

When Gustavus Vasa became king, after his romantic wanderings and hair-breadth escapes in Dalecarlia, he rebuilt Gripsholm, and it became the favorite residence of royalty. These castle walls have witnessed many dismal scenes, quite out of harmony with the lovely and natural surroundings, for there are few fairer spots in all Sweden.

In one of the towers Eric XIV. kept his brother John a prisoner for several years. The latter had married a Polish princess, and was concerned in a war against Sweden, but, falling prisoner, was sent by the king to the castle of Gripsholm. This Eric was one of our Queen Elizabeth's suitors, and history records that by way of making himself acceptable he sent ambassadors to the English court with costly gifts, among which were eighteen piebald horses and several chests of uncoined bars of gold and silver, strings of Oriental pearls, and many valuable furs. Queen Elizabeth accepted the gifts, but declined the alliance. It was a way she had.

The interior of Gripsholm is a perfect museum of curiosities: there are nearly two thousand historical portraits, and a vast quantity of antique furniture, old tapestry, and curious silver vessels, which had served their time at royal banquets.

THE MIDNIGHT SUN.

LANGLEY COLERIDGE.

[The midnight sun, as visible at the summer solstice from the
North Cape of Norway, is becoming one of the necessary spectacles
of modern travel. Alike for those who cannot and for those who
hope to go there we give the following description of what a
former traveller saw from this cape and on the way thither.]

I really cannot tell what is the great charm of Norway, nor do I think the nameless charm is the same for each. Perhaps those who are old travellers enjoy Norway most. It is well known that in order to do the Whole Duty of Travel an apprenticeship must be served, by no means an irksome one; on the contrary, full of delight; nevertheless, it is an apprenticeship, and, until it has been served, no man can pass as a member of the travelled community. The curriculum includes a knowledge of Paris, of the Rhine, of Switzerland, and a dozen regular rounds. When these have all been "done," then comes Norway as a land of pure delight to the traveller.

There are no picture-galleries to make one's neck ache; no museum to make the weary feet throb; no promenades; no sherry-cobblers to sip while bands play in the gardens; no continuations of London and Brighton. There are no crowds; you may see a magnificent waterfall all by yourself, or ascend a hundred Rigis without meeting a soul. There are no loafers; and you may get into boats and out of boats, into carrioles and out of carrioles, without one humpbacked beggar-boy or man with his eye in a sling to whine at you, or one officious person getting in the way in order to be paid for it. There are no mammoth hotels, where you have to climb a dozen flights of stairs before you can reach your bed; no billiards when once you have left the three chief towns; no stuffy railways to whizz you past the best scenery; no dressing for dinner.

Now, all these things, to one who has been over and over again to the most civilized places in the world, are very refreshing; and yet these are perhaps but minor points, and do not explain the secret of the great charm of Norway. Rip Van Winkle's was a wonderful sleep; he woke and found the world had gone forward a hundred years; but the traveller who sleeps on the North Sea and wakes up in the morning in Norway has had a more wonderful sleep. He wakes and finds the world has gone back half a millennium! Southward the countries of Europe have struggled and slaved in the race for the perfection of civilization, while Norway is as it was in the beginning. Southward the countries have obeyed the watchword, "Forward!" Norway has obeyed the signal, "As you were!"

Now, fancy yourself--you, who have done as the Southerners do--arriving at a little village in an out-of-the-way place in Norway. Nobody flutters about your carriole to escort you to a hotel, but you enter the "station," a low, rambling wooden structure, with diffidence. You see the lady of the house and shake hands with her; you ask her to be good enough to let you stay there the night; you enter a bedroom, where everything is plain as a deal box, but clean as a Dutch tulip. Then you sit down with the family in the general room to your meal. It will assuredly consist of either trout and salmon, or salmon and trout, with perhaps an egg, perhaps potatoes, perhaps black bread. No Bass, but perhaps some Norsk Öl, a very pleasant beverage. After supper you will smoke a pipe with your landlord, who will probably invite you to see the pigs, or will lend you a hand to splice up any broken harness of your carriole.

About nine or ten o'clock you will go to bed, in the broad daylight if it be summer-time, and in the morning you will wake up, finding the landlady's daughter at your bedside, with a delicious cup of hot coffee and a natty little roll, or perchance a biscuit. And then, still early in the morning, you will bid farewell as to old friends, you will shake hands all round, and away in your carriole to drive through romantic scenery, and to feel as though Norway had been made specially for you.

Before you have been two days in the country you will love the quaint, unsophisticated people, so hearty in their kindness, so ungrudging in their hospitality, and their Old-World manners and customs, so genuine in an age of sham, so solid in an age of veneer. One great charm of Norway, then, is its people; another, and perhaps more to be appreciated by some, is its scenery.

"Is it like Switzerland?" No; Norway is only like Norway. It is not so grand as regards the height of its mountains, yet its grandeur is far more solemn. It has a dozen fjords more startling than the Lake of Lucerne; in a day's journey you will pass waterfalls and cascades which would make a fortune to "proprietors" in Switzerland, and are not so much as mentioned in the Norwegian guide-books. Switzerland is grand beyond compare, but it must be confessed it is a monotonous grandeur. Not so with Norway: its charms of scenery are varied as they are unique. A coast wild and rugged; mighty pine-forests, interminable; lakes beautiful as Windermere; fjords awful in their grandeur; valleys rich in their fertility; fjelds bare and barren; sport with the gun, sport with the rod; these and a hundred other charms may be entered in the catalogue.

But all these are outweighed by the strange, weird beauty and grandeur of the neighborhood of the North Cape. I know of nothing that comes within the range of tourist experiences that will make a more lasting impression on the memory than a day or two in the region of the midnight sun.

For the student, the professional man, the overworked generally, and especially those whose brains are overworked, there is no tour that will be more beneficial than the one I propose briefly to sketch.

Go to Christiansand. Then, if you have never been to Norway, proceed to Christiania, and, after staying a day or two in that interesting town and neighborhood, continue your journey either to Trondhjem or Bergen, it matters not which, or, better still, if you can, do both. The trip to one, the other, or both, will give you a good idea of scenery in Norway. At either Bergen or Trondhjem take the steamer for Hammerfest. And then will commence one of the most delightful voyages it is possible to make.

The steamer keeps close to the shore, and the shore is the most curious in the world; you have but to look at a map to see its wonderful indentations; you cannot realize them until you find yourself now in a bay or a cove, now among groups of islands, then in the midst of a fjord, with sheer rocks rising perpendicularly from the sea, and anon in the harbor of a little town, with groups of wondering peasantry around you. You will see some parts of the coast so wild that you cannot credit the fact that human beings can be found there, and you will find verdant nooks so peaceful and pretty that you will be tempted to think that there, away from the world, you would like to build your house and finish up your days. At one time you will come to the haunts of water-fowl innumerable; at another a shoal of whales will be around you.

The towns and villages at which you will halt will have a special charm. The curious costumes of the people; the antique architecture of their houses and churches; the good, but old-fashioned, contrivances connected with their fishing avocations,--all these will be novel.

Among the red-letter days of the trip will be a sail among the Loffoden Islands, "jagged as the jaws of a shark," and swarming with sea-fowl; a glimpse at the neighborhood of the Maelström, so celebrated in fable; a visit to a Lapp encampment, and an occasional stroll through some of the towns at which the steamer stays. Tromsö is one of these halting-places: it is a modern town, which has grown rapidly. It was only founded in 1794, and in 1816 had but three hundred inhabitants; now, owing to the success of its herring-fishery, it has grown strangely for Norway, and has a population of over five thousand. It is charmingly situated on an island, and its rich fertility contrasts most singularly with the wildness of the surrounding mountains. Hammerfest, too, is interesting, not only because it is the most northerly town in the world, and because "in the season" it is crowded with representatives of all nations, who come here to trade, but because here you are within the limits of the region of the Midnight Sun, and from here you will take your boat (unless you continue by the Vadsö steamer) for the North Cape.

The effect of the midnight sun has been variously described. Carlyle revels in the idea that while all the nations of the earth are sleeping, you here stand in the presence of that great power which will wake them all; Bayard Taylor delights in the gorgeous coloring; and each traveller has some new poetic thought to register. For myself the midnight sun has a solemnity which nothing else in nature has. Midnight is solemn in the darkness; it is a hundredfold more solemn in the glare of sunlight, richer than ever is sun under tropical skies. It is "silence, as of death;" not the hum of a bird, not the buzz of an insect, not the distant voice of a human being. Silence palpable. You do not feel drowsy, though it is midnight; you feel a strange fear creep over you as if in a nightmare, and dare not speak; you think what if it should be true that the world is in its last sleep, and you are the last living ones, yourselves on the verge of the Eternal Ocean?

It is amusing, afterwards, to think of the way in which you landed on your excursion to the North Cape; how every one seemed impressed with the same idea that it was a sacrilege to break the silence, and the party that set forth in high spirits had settled down into the gravity of a funeral cortége. And it is strange how the stillness and awfulness, felt while in the little boat upon the silent sea, held you spellbound and entranced; and the spell could not be broken until you set to work on the difficult climb to the head of the North Cape. And when you reached the top you felt--well, I don't know how.

To some standing on the highest part of the plateau, a thousand feet above the sea, and looking away to that great unknown Arctic Ocean, it has seemed as if they had come to the end of the earth; that they were gazing upon the confines of the eternal regions; that they saw in the distance the outlines of the land of which it is said, "There is no night there."

Every tourist mind has its own particular magnet. I do not know what event in the history of a tourist life most attracts my memory. No one can ever forget the day when he first gazes upon Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives; or Damascus seen from the Mount of Mohammed; or the sunny morning when he rounds the Golden Horn, and Constantinople bursts on the view.

These are memories which never grow dim; and I am inclined to think that when a tourist finds himself in a small boat at midnight, drawing near to the North Cape in the midst of the most gorgeous sunlight ever seen, he has found a sensation which will be green in his memory to the day of his death.

In this brief paper I have not found time to be practical. The trip to the North Cape should be made in June or July; it may be made in August or September, and in the latter month there is a chance of seeing the first blushes of the Aurora Borealis. I am much inclined to think that a winter excursion to the North Cape would be one of the grandest sensations that the tourist's heart could wish, but of this I am not in a position to judge.

If my readers are like myself, they never bring one summer trip to a close before they have arranged in their own minds for the next; and so I throw out the hint that ere the North Cape shall be scribbled over with the names of Smith and Jones; ere excursion boats, with Ethiopian serenaders on board, shall put forth from Hammerfest; ere a big hotel shall stand upon the summit, and a man shall blow a horn to announce when "the sun is at its best," it will be well to consider whether a trip to the North Cape is not worth serious consideration.

IN THE RUSSIAN CAPITAL

SAMUEL S. COX.

["Arctic Sunbeams," by Hon. S. S. Cox, is full of matter of
interest, the author seeing well and telling ably. We give some of
his impressions of St. Petersburg, beginning his journey at the
fortress and city of Cronstadt, the strongly-defended port of the
capital of Russia.]

Leaving the arsenals, dock-yards, wharves, batteries, and ships of this Gibraltar of the Czar,--and but for which St. Petersburg might have been burned, like another Moscow, by its own hands, rather than it should have fallen into those of an invader,--our steamer glides on what becomes a summer sea of smoothness. The few passengers begin to appear on deck and stretch their vision for the first glance at the imperial city. Upon the right, snug amidst its royal greenery, lies the town of Peterhoff and its domes, minarets, and imperial palace, with its splendid woods and waters. Our time is opportune for a glorious sight, for it is sunset, and the sun goes down here at a discreet hour. Bright dots of burnished gold begin faintly to spangle the sky in front. They are domes, half hidden by the mist and the distance. Then a tall spire, also gilded, brilliant and needle-like, pierces the heavens! It is the Admiralty spire, or perhaps that of the Church of the Fortress, the Westminster of Russia, the mausoleum of its dead kings. A few moments, and St. Isaac's Church, the St. Peter's of Russia, looms up in majestic and stupendous proportions. Its copper dome is surrounded by four others, all ablaze, like burnished gold, and surmounted by the gilded Greek cross which towers aloft, above the bronze saints and angels which people its architraves and its corners, its roofs and its pillared granite cupola! Beneath it is a city whose roofs of varied hue cover almost a million of people; a city the outgrowth from a swamp in less than two hundred years.

We enter the Neva, whose divided waters flow in canals and lagoons between grand pavements and superb palaces. At length we are moored--alas! how soon the beatific vision vanishes!--amidst the traffic and troubles of trade. We are to undergo a search, the first yet made with rigor since our journey began. Nor can I complain of this rigor. Recent events make police regulations here necessarily stringent. But was it not a little humorous to see the long-robed customs officers scrutinize the heterogeneous matters in our trunks? Nothing was found contraband but--what think you?--New York journals!

We had received a mail at Stockholm, and expected to read up fully in St. Petersburg. Some dozen of these journals lay in a pile in my wife's trunk. It would have done you good to see the leonine voracity with which these papers were seized. Who was it that talked of the thousand tongues of the press, clearer far than the silver trumpet of the jubilee,--louder than the voice of the herald at the games? These tongues had not a word of protest; the music of their trumpet was frozen like that of the veracious traveller. Out of the bundle tumbled an engraving of Charles XII., the old enemy of Russia! Did I tremble for the ominous spectre of this dead madcap of Sweden? The courteous officer handed it back with a gracious smile to my wife, who reached for the rest of the bundle, while her face flushed at the indignity to and the confusion of her domestic arrangements. But, with a hasty push and an impetuous "Niebt! Niebt!" (No! no!) our papers were confiscated to the state. The _Sun_ would not go down in this land; the _Tribune_ was a voiceless oracle; the _World_ ceased to "move after all;" the _Times_ were out of joint, and the _Express_ came to a dead halt! But all this had its compensations; for soon we cross the great bridge, and are housed in the Hôtel d'Angleterre, where though no papers were found in our expected mail, plenty of news as to the President, and the land we love, were found in letters, and these twelve days only from New York.

There shine into my windows, in dazzling glitter, the copper domes of that marvel of cathedrals, St. Isaac's, which we saw from afar, upon whose sides and pedestals, encamping night and day about us, are the angels of this edifice of beauty! The guns of the citadel thunder out the memory of this, the birthday of the Empress of this vast empire; and, in spite of all ominous auguries to the contrary, we sojourn in peace and safety in this city of beauty and bazaars, palaces and pigeons, monuments and minarets, domes and deviltry, ceremonies and cemeteries, armies and assassinations!

Why does everybody, except the Russians, call this city St. Petersburg? It was not named after St. Peter, but Peter the Great. It is a magnificent city of palaces and wide avenues. Its very hospitals and barracks are palatial, and there is no narrowness to any thoroughfare. Its domes, where not painted blue with golden stars, or green, are gilded, and make the city seem like a Constantinople new-risen upon the North. In fact, with its canals and rivers, its streets, columns, and palaces, its churches, and their outside and inside decorations, St. Petersburg combines in itself and in its vistas, in its plan and its magnificence, Venice, Amsterdam, Paris, and Constantinople. If it were not stucco on the yellow houses, if it were only solid stone, how much more impressive would be its mighty and superb aspect! Only one palace is of granite, and but one church, St. Isaac's, of marble.

The energy which has reared such a city out of a bog in less than two centuries betokens the one-man energy which its founder inspired and illustrated. Still, St. Petersburg, as a look from an elevation will show, unless it be approached as we approached it, by the gulf and river, is a vast plain, if not a swamp. The Neva saves it. It is a splendid river, and makes its delta where the city stands. It is a city of islands, connected by beautiful bridges. Red granite faces the banks and makes the quays solid structures. Everything is colossal like the empire. The informing genius of the male gender is Peter the Great, and of the other gender Catherine II. If these sovereigns were insane, and they were very peculiar for Russia, more insanity is desirable among the princes of the earth. Peter opened this city, as he said, for a window for Russia to look out of into civilized Europe. Peter was a useful emperor for Russia and his time, although he did many diabolical things.

[Mr. Cox ventured upon a witticism, in consequence of which he
was mistaken for Mark Twain, whose peculiar vein of humor seems
to have made its mark on the Russian guide. He proceeds to give
his opinion of Russian humor.]

The Russian humor is like that of Byron, which Edgar Poe said was too savage to be laughed at. Some one calls it grotesque savagery; and illustrates it by the freaks of Russian princes and czars. John the Terrible thought there was no church like that of St. Basil, and put out the architect's eyes to end any future work of that gifted artist. Peter the Great proposed to hang the lawyers in his realm. He thought one was too much. There is a story of the Empress Anne, who married off her favorite dwarf or fool in an ice palace and gave them an icy marriage-bed, where they froze to death. This I have seen pictured in fine color and delineation. It was a Russian pleasantry. Catherine II. slaughtered many of the men whom she did not love--out of a vagary of fun. Most of the people here hold their revels in graveyards. Peter stuffed the skin of one of his favorite servants--a tall fellow--and put him in a museum. Paul issued a ukase against shoestrings and round hats. He was fond of colors, and had fantastic hues painted on bridges and gates. It is hardly mirthful to make an eagle out of gun-flints and swords, or portray a group in heaven of Russians looking down on Jews, Germans, and negroes. But this is Muscovite merriment. In the Moscow markets the slaughtered animals are stuffed with sawdust and look odd. It is said of the Emperor Paul that he dug up the bones of those who murdered his father to pulverize them and blow them to the winds. He arrested an Englishman for not taking off his hat to Royalty, and ordered him to wear magnifying-glasses. This was jolly but not exceptional, for the Russian is not adept in making genial fun. The climate is not genial.

[After seeing something of St. Petersburg on foot, he took a
carriage,--whose characteristics he thus describes:]

The drosky is an odd-looking fleet sort of cab, which barely seats two. It is near the ground, and if it upsets, it is safer than when it is going. Its speed over the boulders is immense. Its driver is good, and good-humored. The carts, wagons, drays, as well as droskies, have a peculiar harness for the horse. The eminent characteristic of the establishment is a sort of harness or yoke, about four or five feet above the animal's shoulders. This is not peculiar to Russia, but it is here developed in a higher degree. It rests on the shafts, and somehow, as I believe (_loquor non inexpertus_), the horse has freer motion and an easier draught under this yoke. It does not strain him about the vitalities like our harness. He seems to run loosely as under a canopy of green, though many of the yokes are thus painted with emblems and owners' names on them.

While watching a caravan of these yokes which do not oppress, I had occasion to look through a long line of them, fifty in number, carrying the rye-flour in sacks across the city, and discovered another peculiarity. There is a stout rope from the horse's shoulders to the front axle, which extends some two feet out of the hub to hold these extra traces. The strain seemed to be upon these traces as much as upon the shafts; and just as I was driving in a hurried way--for our driver was dashing at the usual pace--one of our wheels came off and rolled a rod, and down we were! Thanks to the good gray team and some promptitude, we escaped harm; while sympathies all about from the gathered crowd showed that there was much kindness upon the street....

What sights to our unaccustomed eyes are on every side as we drive! Little Tartar children dressed in green; the soldiers with heavy coats and long spears, from the tribes of the Don, the Cossack of history; hussars of red, gay uniform; Caucasian soldiers, with dresses as gay as the Spahis of Algiers,--with the various large-breeched natives, in top-boots, or with red shirts only covered by a dark vest,--add to the spectacle.

The avenues are wide, and lined with high yellow buildings, palaces, and government edifices, all proportionate to the immense empire of the two continents. The signs look quaint with their peculiar lettering, and the houses, which rarely have doors in front, are unusual in their aspect. The sheet-iron roofs painted green and red; the police in their green uniform and sword; the rivers and canals, full of strange craft darting about in active business, some from far inland, laden with grain, and some bearing passengers over the Neva and under its bridges,--all these odd pictures contribute to keep us on the alert. We drive along the Neva, whose splendid avenues and quays are one. They are lined by the same yellow buildings, where the families of the royal house reside. Then we cross the Neva on a pontoon bridge, called the Troutsen, from which a splendid view is had of the spreading waters of the river,--bounded at one end by the elegant edifice of the Commercial Exchange. In winter the river is used for races upon the ice.

Then we turn into Alexandria Park, and admire the villas of the merchant princes upon the lagoons into which the Neva is divided. From the rounding point we perceive the Finland Gulf, Cronstadt, and Peterhoff, and all the points which we passed on our route hither. Then we turn into the Zoological Gardens, where white bears and young cubs, wolves, and walruses, along with thousands of pleasure-seekers, together enjoy the brilliant mimic scenes till midnight. There we found (for fifteen cents only) a splendid theatre, out-doors, and famous dogs and monkeys performing, followed by a ballet in pantomime, in which Greeks and Turks play parts, and in which the heroes and heroines of the former are lifted through a gorgeous display of many-colored lights into clouds of glory, amidst the cheers of the populace, which never forgets that Turkey is its natural foe, and that Constantinople is its natural if not national capital....

Upon our drive we notice some fine triumphal arches--copied after the classic models and those of other countries--and other monuments, but none equals the superb Alexander column, erected in 1832. It is a solid shaft of red granite, the greatest monolith of the world. It is based on an enormous block of red granite. There is an angel on the summit. The monument is one hundred and fifty-four feet high, and has a noble and inspiring grace and grandeur. Other statues to Peter and Catherine, besides statues to soldiers and poets, make every square of this grand city monumental. There is also an equestrian statue of Nicholas. The horse is like that of General Jackson's in Lafayette Square, Washington, and stands upon his hind legs only. It is so much more elegantly and gracefully posed that I could not but compare it to the disadvantage of our own favorite charger.

On no day have we failed to find something about Peter the Great! In "the summer gardens" there is an old palace, where are sacred relics of his handiwork, such as chairs, cabinets, and Chinese designs. The kitchen and bathroom have tiles of the old Dutch style, which he greatly affected. The chimney is as huge as the room. Within is a prison, where he is said to have kept his personal enemies, without benefit of habeas corpus or clergy. It looks gloomy, and the grating seems to be peculiarly adapted to a jail; but it is not very likely that Peter would have enjoyed such society in his own favorite home....

The drives in the parks are beautiful. Therein is a lovely palace where lived the Princess Dagmar before she became empress. The armory here forms a museum of wonderful interest, for it has gifts of untold value from Spain to Persia and beyond. Every kind of gun, sword, and dagger is here; and those from the conquered sheiks and khans of Asia shine resplendent in jewels by the mass. The saddle-cloths from the Orient, and especially the presents from the Shah of Persia, are the richest known to any collection in the world. Among the manifold things here to be seen are the lock and key found near the site of the temple of Jerusalem; the jewelry of the harem of the Khan of Khiva,--a wonderful collection for female adornment; Chevalier Bayard's cuirass; a spear which opens after it enters the body; an alarm clock which shoots off a gun to awaken the sleeper; the flags taken in the Hungarian insurrection of 1849; the baton of Schamyl, the Circassian chief, who fought Russia so many years; the emeralds, by the quantity, which the Shah of Persia sent to the Czar; the "horse furniture" of the Indian sheiks, and a circular knife which they used to hurl, which cut your head off before you could say your little prayer; and as a proper apex to this collection of curious gifts and gems, worth alone sixty millions of rubles, the sword of Mazeppa, the brave hetman of the Poles, who will never cease to ride through histrionic and historic dangers on that fierce untamed charger of the desert!...

If you would find in full perfection the richest in all respects of all the palaces in the world, I suppose the Winter Palace would be that superlative edifice. Since the attempt to blow it up as the royal people were about to dine it has been closed. I made an effort, through Colonel Hoffman, our chargé d'affaires, to obtain an entrance for the Americans now stopping here, but vainly. Recent events forbade. The Czar himself will not go into it again. It is shut for two years. This was a disappointment, but it was partly compensated for by admission to the "Hermitage," which is a part or a neighbor to the Winter Palace. But the Hermitage seems to be enough for all our time.

All the "masters," old and young, native and foreign, are in profusion here, as well as specimens of the exhaustless mineral glories of Russia and Siberia in every form of carved beauty and tasteful grace. Museums of ancient statuary, coins, jewels, and intaglios, illustrating every age and phase of history, and, as a climax of interest, the relics of the city of Kertch and other palaces in the Greek colonies of two thousand years ago,--now in southern Russia,--are here. This exhibition supplements General Cesnola's Cyprian antiquities, and would add fresh interest to our home museum. Upon these Greek relics are found such dresses, worn by the ancient Scythians, as our drosky-drivers now wear, and bas-reliefs on these old vases show horses managed exactly as my former Ohio constituent, Rarey, used to quell the worst "Cruisers" of the equestrian world.

But, as a small American boy remarked at the end of our six hours' promenade through these corridors, "We feel two thousand years old ourselves, we have travelled so much and so far."

Do you ask, is Peter the Great to be found at the Hermitage? Surely, he is everywhere. Here are his lathes, tools and knives, and _plaques_, or disks of copper and ivory, cut by his own hand. Here, too, is his measuring-staff, which was a foot taller than any one in our party, and that of his valet, a foot taller than Peter! How could he be such a warrior, statesman, mechanic, and architect, ruling such an immense and incongruous people so well, and make so many knick-knacks with his own hand and out of his own mechanical contrivance? This conundrum puzzles the brain. We are curious to know the secret of Peter's power, and of the glamour of grandeur around this giant of Muscovite history and modern civilization....

The staircase of this palace of the Hermitage has no equal in its size and proportion. Outside, there are immense black colossal porphyry figures bearing up the portico, each an Atlas itself. They are emblems of the eighty millions of subjects, which from every rank uphold this extended empire. With its sixty millions of farmers, now free; its seven millions of villagers, its one million of gentry, nobles, and officers, and its four millions of military men and their families, it would seem that the vast edifice of the Russian power would be stable, supported by such Atlantean shoulders. Is it really so? Time will tell. For the welfare of all it is to be wished that there was more comfort and elevation among these vast masses of men.

A VISIT TO FINLAND.

DAVID KER.

[Finland is now Northern Russia, and the Finns are classed as
Russians; but it is so only in autocratic decrees and tax-lists.
The Finns cannot, by any governmental metamorphosis, be
transformed into Russians, and their land will still retain its
individuality. In winter it lies deep within the domain of the
ice-king. How it appears in summer is described in the following
record of travel.]

"Why don't you go to Imatra?" asks my friend P---- as we lean over the side of the Peterhof steamer and watch the golden domes of St. Petersburg rising slowly from the dull gray level of the Gulf of Finland. "Now that you've seen a bit of Central Russia, that's the next thing for you to do. Go to Imatra, and I'll go too."

"And where on earth is Imatra?" ask I, innocently.

"Oh, come! you don't mean to say you've never heard of Imatra? Why, everybody knows it. Let's go there next week."

Nevertheless, it so happens that I have _not_ heard of Imatra,--an ignorance probably shared by most people out of Russia, and perhaps not a few in it. But I am destined to a speedier acquaintance than I had anticipated with the famous waterfall (or "foss," as the natives call it), which, lying forty miles due north of the Finnish port of Viborg, close to the renowned "Saima Lake," attracts the amateur fishermen of St. Petersburg by scores every summer....

Accordingly, behold all our preparations made,--knapsacks packed, tear-and-wear garments put in requisition, many-colored Russian notes exchanged (at a fearful discount) for dingy Finnish silver,--and at half-past ten on a not particularly bright July morning we stand on the deck of the anything but "good ship" "Konstantin," bound for Viborg.

Despite her tortoise qualities as a steamer, however (which prolong our voyage to nearly nine hours), the vessel is really luxurious in her accommodations; and were her progress even slower, the motley groups around us (groups such as only Dickens could describe or Leech portray) would sufficiently beguile the time,--jaunty boy-officers in brand-new uniforms, gallantly puffing their _papirossi_ (paper cigarettes) in defiance of coming nausea, and discussing the merits of the new opera loud enough to assure every one within earshot that they know nothing whatever about it; squat Finnish peasants, whose round, puffy faces and thick yellow hair are irresistibly suggestive of over-boiled apple-dumplings; gray-coated Russian soldiers, with the dogged endurance of their race written in every line of their patient, stolid, unyielding faces; a lanky Swede, whose huge cork hat and broad collar give him the look of an exaggerated medicine-bottle; the inevitable tourist in the inevitable plaid suit, struggling with endless convolutions of fishing-tackle and hooking himself in a fresh place at every turn; three or four pale-faced clerks on leave, looking very much as if their "overwork" had been in some way connected with cigars and bad brandy; a German tradesman from Vasili-Ostroff (with the short turnip-colored moustache characteristic of Wilhelm in his normal state), in dutiful attendance on his wife, who is just completing her preparations for being comfortably ill as soon as the vessel starts; and a fine specimen of the real British merchant, talking vehemently (in a miraculous dialect of his own invention) to a Russian official, whose air of studied politeness shows plainly that he does not understand a word of his neighbor's discourse.

Directly we go off the rain comes on, with that singular fatality characteristic of pleasure-trips in general, arising, doubtless, from the mysterious law which ordains that a man shall step into a puddle the instant he has had his boots blacked, and that a piece of bread-and-butter shall fall (how would Sir Isaac Newton have accounted for it?) with the buttered side downward. In a trice the deck is deserted by all save two or three self-devoted martyrs in mackintosh, who "pace the plank" with that air of stern resolution worn by an Englishman when dancing a quadrille or discharging any other painful duty. The scenery throughout the entire voyage consists chiefly of fog, relieved by occasional patches of sand-bank; and small wonder if the superior attractions of the well-spread dinner-table detain most of our fellow-sufferers below. What is this first dish that they offer us? _Raw salmon_, by the shade of Soyer! sliced thin and loaded with pepper. Then follow soup, fried trout, roast beef, boiled ditto, slices of German sausage, neck of veal and bacon, fried potatoes and cabbage. Surely, now, "Hold, enough!" Not a bit of it: enter an enormous plum-pudding, which might do duty for a globe at any provincial school; next, a dish of rice and preserve, followed by some of the strongest conceivable cheese; finally, strawberries and bilberries, with cream and sugar _ad libitum_. Involuntarily I recall the famous old American story of the "boss" at a railway refreshment-room who demanded fifty cents extra from a passenger who stuck to the table after all the rest had dined and gone away. "Your board says, 'Dinner, three dollars and fifty cents!'" remonstrated the victim.--"Ah! that's all very well for reasonable human bein's with one stomach apiece," retorted the Inexorable; "but when a feller eats _as if there were no hereafter_, we've got to pile it on!"

As we pass Cronstadt the fog "lifts" slightly, giving us a momentary glimpse of the huge forts that guard the passage,--the locked door which bars out Western Europe. There is nothing showy or pretentious about these squat, round-shouldered, narrow-eyed sentinels of the channel; but they have a grim air of reserved strength, as though they could be terribly effective in time of need. Two huge forts now command the "southern channel," in addition to the four which guarded it at the time of the Baltic expedition during the Crimean war; and the land-batteries (into which no outsider is now admitted without special permission) are being strengthened by movable shields of iron and other appliances of the kind, for which nearly one million roubles (one hundred and fifty thousand pounds) have been set apart. The seaward approaches are commanded by numerous guns of formidable calibre, and far away on the long, level promontory of the North Spit we can just descry a dark excrescence,--the battery recently constructed for the defence of the "northern passage." Thus, from the Finnish coast to Oranienbaum a bristling line of unbroken fortification proclaims Russia's aversion to war, and the gaping mouths of innumerable cannon announce to all who approach, with silent eloquence, that "L'empire c'est la paix." It is a fine political parable that the Western traveller's first glimpse of Russian civilization should assume the form of a line of batteries, reminding one of poor Mungo Park's splendid unconscious sarcasm, when, while wandering helplessly in the desert, he came suddenly upon a gibbet with a man hanging in chains upon it; "Whereupon," says he, "I kneeled down and gave hearty thanks to Almighty God, who had been pleased to conduct me once more into a Christian and civilized country."

[The steamboat journey ended at the Finnish port of Viborg,
eighty miles by land from St. Petersburg, and now accessible
by rail.]

"We must breakfast early to-morrow, mind," says P----, as we settle into our respective beds, "for a march in the sun here is no joke, you bet!"

"Worse than in Arabia or South America?" ask I with calm scorn.

"You'll find the north of Russia a pretty fair match for both at this season. Do you happen to know that one of the hottest places in the world is Archangelsk on the White Sea? In summer the pitch melts off the vessels like butter, and the mosquitoes are so thick that the men on board the grain-ships fairly burrow into the corn for shelter. Good-night! Sharp six to-morrow, mind!"

Accordingly, the early daylight finds us tramping along the edge of the picturesque little creek (dappled here and there with wood-crowned islets) in order to get well into our work before the sun is high in the sky, for a forty-mile march, knapsack on shoulder, across a difficult country, in the heat of a real Russian summer, is not a thing to be trifled with, even by men who have seen Turkey and Syria. A sudden turn of the road soon blots out the sea, and we plunge at once into the green silent depths of the northern forest.

It is characteristic of the country that, barely out of sight of one of the principal ports of Finland, we are in the midst of a loneliness as utter as if it had never been broken by man. The only tokens of his presence are the narrow swath of road running between the dim, unending files of the shadowy pine-trees, and the tall wooden posts, striped black and white like a zebra, which mark the distance in versts from Viborg, the verst being two-thirds of a mile.

To an unpractised eye the marvellous smoothness and hardness of this forest highway (unsurpassed by any macadamized road in England) might suggest a better opinion of the local civilization than it deserves; for in this case it is the soil, not the administration, that merits all the credit. In granite-paved Finland, as in limestone-paved Barbadoes, Nature has already laid down your road in a way that no human engineering can rival, and all you have to do is to smooth it to your own liking.

And now the great panorama of the far North--a noble change from the flat unending monotony of the Russian steppes--begins in all its splendor. At one moment we are buried in a dark depth of forest, shadowy and spectral as those which haunt us in the weird outlines of Retzsch; the next minute we burst upon an open valley, bright with fresh grass, and with a still, shining lake slumbering in the centre, the whole picture framed in a background of sombre woods. Here rise giant boulders of granite, crested with spreading pines,--own brothers, perhaps, of the block dragged hence eighty years ago from which the greatest of Russian rulers still looks down upon the city that bears his name; there, bluffs of wooded hill rear themselves above the surrounding sea of foliage, and at times the roadside is dotted with the little wooden huts of the natives, whence wooden-faced women, turbaned with colored handkerchiefs, and white-headed children, in nothing but a short night-gown with a warm lining of dirt, stare wonderingly at us as we go striding past. And over all hangs the clear, pearly-gray northern sky.

One hour is past, and still the air keeps moderately fresh, although the increasing glare warns us that it will be what I once heard a British tourist call "more hotterer" by and by. So far, however, we have not turned a hair, and the second hour's work matches the first to an inch. As we pass through the little hamlet which marks the first quarter of our allotted distance we instinctively pull out our watches: "Ten miles in two hours! Not so bad, but we must keep it up."

So we set ourselves to the third hour, and out comes the sun--bright and beautiful and destroying as Homer's Achilles:

"Bright are his rays, but evil fate they send,
And to sad man destroying heat portend."