The whole extent of one wall is occupied by an array of boots, from the iron jack boots of Peter to the delicate beaver skin of the Emperor Alexander.
On the other side are suspended some Damascus scimitars, and very curious Chinese sabres.
The Arsenal contains nearly 900 cannon, weighing about 400 tons, a great number French, taken during the disastrous retreat in 1812. Among all these warlike trophies you will be proud to learn very few are English.
Close to the tower of Ivan Veliki is placed on a massive pedestal the mighty bell. It was cast by the command of the Empress Ann in 1730, and bears her figure in flowing robes on its surface, beneath which is a deep border of flowers. It is said the tower on which it was originally hung was burnt in 1737, and its fall buried the enormous mass deep in the earth, and broke a huge fragment from it.
In the spring of 1837, exactly a century after it fell, the Emperor Nicholas caused it to be removed and placed on its present pedestal, with the broken fragment beside it. The fragment is about 6 feet high and 3 feet thick.
The height of the whole bell is 21 feet 3 inches and 25 feet 5 inches in diameter, and weighs 443,722 lbs., or more than 153 tons, and is supposed to have cost £350,000, as in addition to the copper, many persons, during the process of casting, threw large quantities of gold and silver into each of the four furnaces.
The tower of John the Great is more than 200 feet high, surmounted by a gilded dome, of which there are about 60 in the Kremlin.
In the first storey hangs a bell, which but for its mightier neighbour below would appear stupendous, being 60 tons.
To ring it is impossible; even to toll it requires the united strength of three men pulling with separate ropes the vast clapper; above this are 40 or 50 more.
The cathedral of St. Basil, situated outside the Kremlin, is a truly grotesque building, having no less than 20 towers and domes, all of different shapes and sizes, and painted in every possible colour. Some are crowned with a network of green over a surface of yellow; another dome is bright red, with broad white stripes, and a third is gilded.