59 



"Keturning to details of my journey. After proceeding some 

 eighteen versts, or twelve miles, by boat through a succession of 

 narrow lakes, I landed at a place where there was a very narrow 

 path, which could only be traversed on foot. A walk of six versts, 

 or four miles, brought me to the village of Morskoy Mosselgie. The 

 road I found pleasant. It goes along a picturesque ridge of hills, 

 running from west to east some thirty -two versts or twenty-one miles 

 north of Povonetz, at an elevation of some seven hundred feet above the 

 level of the adjacent country, being the greatest altitude in the 

 government of Olonetz. 



" This ridge constitutes the watershed of streams flowing on the one 

 side to the Baltic, and on the other to the White Sea. On the former 

 are narrow lakes, which, with the rivers connecting them or issuing 

 from them, flow into the Onega, while on the latter is the Matko- 

 zero, whose waters flowing northward follow the course indicated. 



" On the banks of the Matkozero they fell wood for the saw-mills 

 at Povonetz, transporting it by carts across the Mosselgie ridge, the 

 woodmen going further and further into the interior of the forest, in 

 consequence of the exhaustion of the woods near to the saw-mill. 



" Having crossed the ridge, I found myself in a country manifesting 

 all the characteristics of a northern land. I got into a boat again, and 

 went by the river some ten versts to the village Telekin situated on a 

 river or lake of the same name I say river or lake because it is 

 difficult sometimes to designate precisely what is seen by the one name 

 or the other, or to tell at what point it ceases to be one or the other, 

 and to take the different character where it should be called a narrow 

 lake and where it should be designated a broad river. 



" The general character of the waters in these regions is the follow- 

 ing : Picture to yourself a comparatively small lake, having a flow 

 barely noticeable in some one direction. In the direction of this flow 

 the water becomes perceptibly narrower, and the shores get higher, 

 and the water takes the form of a river, distinguishable from the lake 

 above by being narrower and having a greater current, or it becomes a 

 strong rapid, by which the waters flow into a large expanded lake, 

 which serves as a reservoir for the waters of the surrounding neigh- 

 bourhood. Such are the general characteristics of all the small 

 expanses of waters in this* region. 



" All the rivers and rivulets here have a great many rapids through- 

 out their course. For example, the river Vuigozero, which in a 

 course of 100 versts, 66 miles, from its leaving the lake of that 

 name, to its flow into the White Sea has seventeen rapids. The fall of 

 the river through these rapids is 272 feet. In consequence of these 

 rapids all navigation of the river is out of the question. Only timber 



