St. Petersburg and Home
From Moscow an express train takes us in eleven hours to the capital of Peter the Great, St. Petersburg, at the mouth of the Neva, in the Gulf of Finland. Here we are in the midst of very different scenes from those in Moscow. Here is no longer genuine uncontaminated Russia, but Western civilisation, which has come and washed away the Slavonic. The churches and monasteries indeed are built in the same style as in Moscow, and the eyes meet with the same types and costumes, and the same heavily laden waggons and carts rumble over the Neva bridges; but one feels and sees only too plainly that one is in Europe.
The Neva is forty miles long and a third of a mile broad, and comes from Lake Ladoga. It is spanned by four fine bridges, always crowded with carriages and foot passengers, and in summer numerous small steamboats ply up and down. In winter thick ice lies on the river during four months.
St. Petersburg has nearly two million inhabitants, which is rather more than a hundredth part of the population of the whole Russian empire. The appearance of the town shows that it is new, for the streets are straight and broad. The climate is very raw, damp, and disagreeable, and it rains or snows on 200 days in the year.
A walk through the streets of St. Petersburg shows the traveller much that is strange. Tiny chapels are found everywhere—in the middle of a bridge or at a street corner. They contain only a picture of a saint with candles burning before it. Many persons stop as they pass by, uncover their heads, fall on their knees, cross themselves and murmur a prayer, and then vanish among the crowd in the streets. It is also noticeable that this city is full of uniforms. Not only do the soldiers of the large garrison wear uniforms, but civil officials, schoolboys, students, and many others are dressed in special costumes with bright buttons of brass or silver. But what especially attracts the stranger's attention are the vehicles. Persons of the upper classes drive in open sleighs and cover themselves with bearskins lined with blue, and are drawn by tall, dark, handsome trotters. Sometimes also a troika, or team of three horses abreast, is seen, one of the horses in the middle under the arch which keeps the shafts apart, while the other two, on either side, go at a gallop. The hackney sleighs are also common, so small that two persons can hardly find room to sit, and as there is no support or guard of any kind, they must cling to each other's waists in order not to be thrown off at sharp corners. These small sledges have no fixed stands, but they are drawn up in long rows outside hotels, banks, theatres, railway stations, and other much-frequented places, and may be found singly almost anywhere in the streets. The drivers are always merry and cheerful, and keep up a running conversation with their passenger or their horse, which they call "my little dove." All drive at the same reckless pace, as if they were running races through the streets.
St. Petersburg is rich in art collections and museums, picture-galleries, churches, and fine palaces. The finest building in the city, however, is the Isaac Cathedral, with its high gilded dome, surrounded by four similar but smaller gilded cupolas. The cross at the top is 330 feet above the ground, and the great dome is the first thing in St. Petersburg to be seen on coming by steamer from the Gulf of Finland. When the Cathedral was built, it cost more than two and three-quarter million pounds. It was finished fifty years ago, but has never been in really sound condition, and is always undergoing extensive repairs.
The last stage of our journey is now at hand. One evening we drive in a troika, with much ringing of sleigh bells, to the station of the Finland Railway, whence the train takes us through Viborg to Abo, the old capital of Finland. Here a steamer is waiting to take us over to Stockholm, which was the starting-point of our long journey.