THE START FROM MOSCOW. 6$ 



tivation. But on this first day's ride, and after, we 

 passed many tracts of pine forest that had been set 

 out, and carefully preserved from harm. Fir trees 

 seem to grow best on barren soil, that would grow 

 nothing else. It is customary for Russian land owners, 

 with an eye to the future, to plant tracts of forest, for 

 the benefit of their posterity. Many of these artificial 

 tracts are beautiful to the eye, the young trees stand- 

 ing in straight, long rows, whichever way you look 

 through the forest, like fields of maize in the West. 

 These tracts of forest are often given by Russian land 

 owners as dowry with a daughter. An heiress, in 

 Russia, often means a young lady whose father will fit 

 her out with a blooming trousseau and a " tract of 

 forest." Sascha spoke to me of Russian heiresses with 

 "dowries of 300,000 rubles in forest." 



The important part played by these forests, in 

 Russia, is continually thrust upon the notice of the 

 traveler, whose business is to take cognizance of his sur- 

 roundings. It is the fuel of St. Petersburg and Moscow 

 and all the villages, towns, and cities of the northern 

 half of the country. All summer long the canals of St. 

 Petersburg are filled with monster barges, containing 

 as much as four hundred tons apiece of neatly cut fire- 

 wood. They are moored in the Neva ; they crawl along 

 the canals and smaller streams, and are towed in long 

 strings by stout tugs across the Gulf of Finland, Lakes 

 Ladoga and Onega, and the smaller lakes of the 

 adjacent provinces, all streaming toward the great 

 northern capital. For eight months of the year, six of 

 which are very cold, St. Petersburg has to be heated, and 

 the fuel is wood. With Moscow it is the same, only 



