[13] Cronstadt, the celebrated port of St. Petersburg, although strongly fortified, which of course is to protect the capital, is in itself a wretched town; most of the houses are of wood, the streets unpaved, and containing scarcely a single handsome building. There was much talk of immense batteries and mines under the water; but people who had resided there for years assured me that it was not possible that it could be true.
[14] The expenses of the Russian Court, we were informed, amount to about forty millions of silver rubles per annum, or rather more than six million three hundred and thirty-three thousand pounds sterling.—From a Russian authority.
[15] This unfortunate prince, although thus named, might have been the true heir: there are many more circumstances to prove that he was so than that he was not; his extreme resemblance to his father, his public recognition by his mother, and the cross that had been placed round his neck at his baptism, &c. But it was too much against the interest of his successors for them to acknowledge his rights; his name is still yearly anathematized in the Russian churches, to keep up the belief in his imposture.
[16] A learned Russian traveller assured me that even the account he gave of his journeys in the north of Asia was not allowed to be published; only those parts wherein the desolation of the land was not exposed were permitted to be printed.
[17] The executioner (it is said) is always made intoxicated before inflicting the punishment of the knout.
[18] It is almost a compliment to Ivan IV. so to call him.
[19] St. George with the dragon is the insignia of the Russian order, as well as of the garter in England.
[20] Kremlin is a Tartar word; it means a fortress.
[21] In Russia civilians, as well as military men, have the title of general; it is, therefore, usual to distinguish them by the designation of military or civil as the case may be.
[22] Yet they always spoke of the United States as a half-savage country, and of the Americans as half civilized.