IMPRESSION OF ST. PETERSBURG. 139 



the life of the people and the peculiar mixture of 

 large palaces with small houses, for the most part 

 entirely built of wood, in the broad interminable 

 streets. Also the active sleighing, which in winter 

 takes up the streets and almost entirely excludes the 

 carriage traffic, produces a peculiar effect on the 

 foreigner seeing St. Petersburg for the first time. The 

 inability to understand the language, and to decipher 

 a single inscription on street corners and shops, gives 

 one also a feeling of forlornness and dependence, 

 which it is difficult to shake off. All the more 

 cheering on the other hand is the intercourse with 

 one's compatriots, the extremely developed hospitable 

 family life in the large foreign colony of St. Peters- 

 burg, especially the German, to which it is no mean 

 advantage that the Baltic provinces of Russia have 

 completely preserved their German nationality in the 

 cultivated classes. The higher government posts were 

 at that time for the most part filled by Germans 

 from the Baltic provinces. This extremely facilitated 

 the getting on both socially and commercially of a 

 German coming to St. Petersburg. It was much in 

 my favour that owing to Berlin introductions the 

 scientific circles were thrown open to me. I received 

 a cordial welcome from the most celebrated represen- 

 tatives of Russo- German science, of whom I will only 

 mention the academicians Kupffer, Lenz, Jacobi and 

 von Baer. 



Unfortunately the agreeable, and for my business 

 undertakings advantageous, intercourse was seriously 



