FROM PETERSBURG 
scarcely sufficient for the sledges, and in some 
places the earth was bare. The traveller will 
be more interested in this information than 
readers at home ; and he will of course compare 
the observation with the date of the journey ; as 
the weather in Russia is not subject to those 
irregular vicissitudes experienced in England. 
It may generally he ascertained by the Ca- 
lendar. 
A notion has become prevalent, that the road 
from Petersburg to Moscow is a straight line 
through forests; perhaps, because it was the 
intention of Peter the Great to have it so made 1 . 
The country is generally open, a wide and 
fearful prospect of hopeless sterility, where the 
fir and the dwarf birch, which cover even 
Arctic regions, scarcely find existence. The 
soil is, for the most part, sandy, and of a nature 
to set agriculture at defiance. Towards the 
latter part of the journey, corn-fields of conside- 
rable extent appeared. What the summer road 
may be, we are unable to say ; but our pro- 
(l) When Jonas Hanuay (Travels, Vo!. I. p.,92.) passed in 1743, 
only one hundred miles had beet, completed according to the original 
plan ; which was. to make a bridge of timber for the whole distance of 
four hundred and eighty-seven miles For that space of one hundred 
miles, according to the calculation made by him, no less than two 
millions one hundred thousand trees were required. 
