130 THE FOREST LANDS OF NORTHERN RUSSIA. 
around groups of belfries, cupolas, and domes. Imagine 
a vast green marsh along the bank of a broad brown river, 
with mounds of clay cropping here and there out of the 
peat and bog; put buildings on these mounds of clay; 
adorn the buildings with frescoes, crown them with cupolas 
and crosses ; fill in the space between church and convent, 
and convent and church, with piles and planks, so as to 
make ground for gardens, streets, and yards; cut two wide 
lanes from the church called “Smith’s Wife,” to the mon- 
astery of St. Michael, three or four miles in length ; connect 
these lanes and the stream by a dozen clearings ; paint the 
walls of church and convent white, the domes green and 
blue ; surround the log houses with open gardens ; stick a 
geranium, a fuchsia, and an oleander into every window; 
leave the grass growing everywhere in street and clearing 
—and you have Archangel.’ 
In a work entitled, The Land of the North Wind ; or, 
Travels among the Laplanders and the Samoyeds, by Edward 
Rae, F.R.G.S., the following account is given of Rusanovna, 
another port of export which he visited in 1874 :— 
‘Three years ago there was nothing whatever here but 
a steep muddy bank, crowned with firs of the virgin forest. 
Mr Rusanoff, a man of ability and initiative, coming here, 
was struck by the advantages the spot possessed for the 
establishment of a timber port. After long and patient 
investigations in the district he took from the Russian 
Government, I am informed, a concession of eight million 
desatin of forest land lying on and about the great river 
and its branches. This is equivalent to fourteen millions 
of acres, which is considerable. The area of France, inclu- 
sive of the two provinces temporarily occupied by the 
Germans, is about two hundred thousand square miles, and 
we should like to make a comparison ; but as neither-my 
companion nor I know how many acres there are in a 
square mile, and don’t mean to learn superficial measure- 
ment until the métric system is introduced into our puzzle- 
headed fossil old country, we must leave the question alone. 
