Just as the sun was setting, our friends took a carriage and drove to the Islands of the Neva, a favorite resort of the people in the warm months of the year. Great numbers of fashionable carriages were on the road, troikas being more numerous than any other variety. A troika is so called from the number of its horses, rather than from the form of the vehicle. Three horses are harnessed abreast, the central one having above his head the inevitable duga, or yoke. In a well-trained troika the central horse trots, while the two others gallop, with their heads turned outward. It is a dashing and attractive team, and has already made its way into other countries than Russia.
The first part of the drive carried Doctor Bronson and his young companions through streets occupied by the poorer classes, but farther on they passed great numbers of pretty villas, which are the summer homes of the well-to-do inhabitants of the city.
A VILLA ON THE ISLAND.
There is an Imperial villa on one of the islands, and occasionally the Emperor gives a fête in honor of some event, or for the entertainment of a foreign guest. At such times the trees are filled with Chinese lanterns, and the entire building is a blaze of light. The people on the line of the road follow the Imperial example, and illuminate their houses, and the traveller who drives there might easily imagine that he had dropped into a section of fairy-land. Doctor Bronson told the youths that he was in St. Petersburg at the time of the marriage of the Emperor's son, the Grand-duke Vladimir, and one of the sights of the occasion was the illumination of the islands.
"We rode through three or four miles of illuminations," said the Doctor, "and it seemed as though they would never come to an end. At the very entrance of the islands we passed the summer residence of Count Gromoff, one of the millionaires of St. Petersburg, and found it transformed into a palace of fire. Not a tree or bush in the large garden in front of the house was without its cluster of lanterns, and one of our party remarked that it seemed as though half the stars in the sky had fallen and found a lodgement there. In the centre of the scene were the monograms of the Emperor and Empress, and of the newly-wedded pair, outlined in gas-jets; above and behind them was an Imperial mantle surmounted with a crown, and all made with the burning gas. Then the whole cottage was delineated with thousands of lights, and we agreed that never in our lives had we seen such a beautiful picture. Nothing ever produced on the stage of a theatre could equal it.
"Occasionally we came near the water, and wherever we did so it was covered with boats which were as freely illuminated as the trees and houses on shore. Boat-houses and bath-houses were similarly lighted up, and as they are numerous in this part of the Neva, they formed an almost continuous line along the river's bank. We were compelled to go at a walk, as the streets and roads were crowded with vehicles, and consequently our drive through this city of lanterns occupied more than an hour."
Doctor Bronson gave other details of the celebration which we have not time to repeat, or, rather, they did not find a place in the note-books of the youths. The time was passed pleasantly in a contemplation of the scenes by the way-side—the pretty villas among the trees, the carriages and their occupants, the people on foot, or gathered in front of the houses or on the verandas, the crowds in the cafés and restaurants, which are scattered here and there over the islands, together with other sights that met their eyes. There was enough to make the fortune of an artist if he could have placed all the pretty pictures of the evening upon canvas, and preserved the glow of the northern sky and the twinkle of the lights. A few houses were illuminated, probably in honor of a patron saint, or to commemorate an event in the history of the owner of the establishment. While looking at these illuminations Frank and Fred tried to imagine the whole place lighted up as Doctor Bronson had described it on the occasion of the Imperial fête.