30 THE FOREST LANDS OF FINLAND. 
as such it would be considered by many; but to travellers 
who are fresh from Trollhattan or from those of Italy, its 
beauties will appear somewhat questionable. This stage 
is hilly; the road, however, is good. 
‘The next stage is long, and almost the whole way 
through one unbroken pine forest, the trees coming, in 
many. places quite down to the edge of the road; the 
whole country being covered with stupendous boulder- 
stones, many of them far larger than the one which forms 
the base of the celebrated statue of Peter the Great at 
St. Petersburg. In some cases the rock pierces through 
its thin covering of earth and vegetable matter, and 
spreads its hard surface, uncovered by shrub or plant, over 
a space of many square yards. At length the view opens, 
and the Fortress of Frederickshamm is seen on the opposite 
side of an arm of the sea, which runs some miles inland, 
and round the shores of which the road winds its way. 
‘Not far from Frederickshamm is Risalaks, near which 
are the granite quarries from which were drawn the 
monolith columns for the Church of St. Isaac at St. 
Petersburg,’ * 
.¥ These references, made ‘first to the monolith on which stands the statue of Peter 
the Great in St. Petersburg, and next to the monolith granite columns in St. Isaac’s 
ars may render a few words of inf tion not ptable to the untravelled 
reader. 
In what may be considered the centre of the city is what was formerly known as St. 
Isaac’s Plain, now laid out as a public garden, skirted by the Neva, and almost entirely 
surrounded with public buildings—the Senate House, the Synod, the Admiralty, the 
Winter Palace, the Glaunot Stab, and St. Isaac’s Church, &c. Un the erection of this 
ehurch, of which it may be said it ‘‘ was forty years in building,” much treasure was 
expended : inside, pillars of lapes luzuliand of malachite give adornment to the altar, 
and outside are tiers of pillars of red granite, each of them consisting of a single stone. 
Opposite to this church, but at a considerable distance from it, stands the colossal bronze 
lel eet statue of Peter the Great, ea a his memory by Catherine the Great. 
is stands upon a very large boulder, slightly hewn into shape, which was found in the 
fields, and transported thither for the purpose, and is an object not less remarkable 
than the statue itself. At the opposite end of the plain, but not in the same line, stands 
the monolith pillar erected and dedicated to the memory of his brother Alexander I. by 
his brother, the Emperor Nicholas—statue and angel and church all looking toward 
Finland, the land whence these polished monoliths were brought. To the St. Isaac’s 
Church there are four porches, supported by eight monoliths of polished granite in front, 
and three on the side, each of them 56 feet in height, and 6 feet in diameter, with bases 
and capitals of bronze}; and the five domes are supported by similar monoliths of 
polished granite of smaller size. 
The boulder employed as a base for the equestrian statue of Peter measured when 
found 42 feet long, 27 feet broad, and 21 feet in, height, At one end was a crack, by 
prolonging which a natural slope, admirably Lm fad the stone for the purpose for 
which it wag required, was supplied, It was rolled from Finland on cannon balis, 
