The Alhambra and the Kremlin: The South and the North of Europe

by Samuel Irenæus Prime

The ladies in Russia are very anxious to marry, because they have no liberty before marriage. They are kept constantly under the maternal eye until they are given up to the husband, and then they take their own course, which is a round of gayety and dissipation, only regulated by their means of indulgence. The Greek Church, like the Roman, permits no divorce, but the Emperor, like the Pope, can grant special dispensations.

The marriage ceremonies vary, as in all countries, according to the rank and wealth of the parties. A procession is sometimes met in the streets; and the Emperor’s carriage would, at any time, turn out and give the right of way to a bridal party.

It pleases me always, in a strange country, to find that social enjoyments are so equally distributed over the earth, varying in kind and degree, indeed, according to the religion and civilization of the people, but still all of them having their own ways and means of making themselves happy.

CHAPTER XXXI.
FINLAND.

AT nine in the morning we were to be on board the steamer Wyborg, Captain Nystrom, to go from St. Petersburg to Finland, and thence to Sweden. When we reached the wharf, so great was the crowd of passengers and the crush of luggage and the pressure of freight, that it seemed doubtful if we should be able to get on board. It was summer time, very hot, and the people who had not yet escaped from the city heat, and were able to, were rushing to their rural residences on the sea-coast. They are as much in the habit of this, as our rich people at home are of flying in midsummer to the hills or the sea-shore.

Americans are abroad. Four or five families from the city of New York met on the deck of this steamer, all of whom were making this northern tour, and none of whom were known to each other as away from home. As the boat was to be our hotel for several days, this sudden accession of neighbors was very agreeable, and made the prospect of the excursion more pleasant. And gradually this circle widened, till it embraced Russians and Finns and Swedes and English, with whom our own tongue was more easily a means of communication than it was in Italy or Spain.

We are steaming out of one of the four mouths of the Neva, as it widens into the Gulf of Finland, and for several miles the intricate channel is staked out with care. Cronstadt is the famous port of St. Petersburg, one of the strongest fortifications in the world, and we had expected to see a frowning precipice, a long and lofty range of rocks, defying attack, a Gibraltar in the north of Europe. There is no rock at all. The fortifications are low, and all the more impregnable for that; but we were taken down by their appearance, the situation being so widely different from our anticipations. Napier came here with the British fleet, at the opening of the war that was afterwards called the Crimean, for the very good reason that when the Admiral hurled the whole power of the navy of England against Cronstadt in vain, the war was prosecuted to its close in the southern part of the Russian empire, the Crimea.

The approach to Cronstadt is difficult, and the channel easily defended by the immense fortifications which successive emperors have constructed, well knowing that this is the northern gate of the empire. The dry docks are on a gigantic scale, to meet the demands of a first-class naval power, which Russia is not, and will never be till she moves her seat of government and field of operations to the Bosphorus. Forests of masts, denser forests of masts than we had seen since leaving New York, stood along the docks of Cronstadt. A steamer crowded with passengers, from stem to stern, passed us as we were lying here; she was bound to Revel, and all the Russian coast of the Gulf of Finland. The people are apparently as given to travel as the Americans.

By this time we had begun to get accustomed to the people around us. The Russian children had fur caps on and the ladies wore woollen cloaks, though the weather was so hot as to make the shade of an awning indispensable. Smoking was strictly forbidden, but the captain and all who chose, smoked in the face of the signs that were posted up to prohibit the practice. The Gulf of Finland, on which we are now, is smooth as a summer lake; the day is lovely, skies bright, the breeze delicious, the air bracing; if we have associated chills and fogs and ice and bitter cold with Finland, we must come in winter to find them, for the Hudson River in summer was never more quiet, nor its banks more brilliant in the noontide, than this region to-day. The day has been one to be remembered, among pleasant memories of travel, and toward sunset we run into the harbor of Wyborg. The ancient city stands on an arm of the gulf that sets up six or eight miles, the lumber station of Tronsund being at the mouth. Near this are saw-mills that cut up 160,000 logs in a year, and ships from all parts of Europe come here for lumber; one vessel, rejoicing in the name of Pius IX., was lying at anchor waiting her turn to get northern pine to carry home to Italy. The channel was obstructed in 1854 to prevent the British under Napier from getting up to Wyborg, and now the trouble is just as great for friends as foes, only that the Russians have put the poles into the water, each pole being made to hold a flag above the waves, to designate the tortuous channel. Two large islands lie in front of the town, and make a safe, snug harbor. An arm of the sea stretches away between the lines of fortification and the old town, and in the midst of the water a mighty rock rises majestically, crowned with a tower of other times, partly in ruins now, for the storms of heaven and the storms of earth and sea have often beaten upon it in peace and war. Its roof is gone, but it is a prison still, and its hollow sides have secrets never to be revealed till the final day. The sun is in the west, as we approach the city, and its domed churches blaze in its setting glory. The old castle, now in ruins, has a history of just six hundred years, a history of courage, endurance, and heroism, while it resisted the might of Russia, until in 1710 it yielded to Peter the Great. Then followed, with an interval of a few years only, the submission of Finland to the yoke of Russia, which it still wears.

Finland is a Protestant country, Lutheran being the established religion of the country. The Greek and Roman churches are regarded with equal dislike. All native Finlanders are obliged to have their children baptized in the Lutheran Church. They must also be able to read before they can be married, or take any part in the government of the country.