ON THE VICINITY OF ST. PETERSBURGH. 
237 
which flanks the river. The Neva is a beautiful river ; in the Summer months its 
current sweeps towards the Gulf at the rate of three miles and a half an hour; it 
is then thronged with boats, Ladoga barges, tallow barks, floating haystacks, from 
the interior, and immense timber-rafts; the two latter, especially the last, 
managed as they generally are, by a dozen or so red and blue garmented 
Mochicks, as they glide swiftly past, guided with unerring dexterity, are striking 
and entertaining. At Alexandroskey this river is 350 yards across, and 40 feet 
in depth in the central part; its banks are mostly green, sloping, and of variable 
heights, not exceeding thirty yards; but a smooth and narrow strip of Sand, and 
small pebbles, follows the edge of the water, upon which it is easy and agreeable 
to walk. The summit of the opposite bank is crowned with a dense thicket, 
which recedes from the river a few hundred yards, and then blends with a Pine 
and Birch forest; the breadth of which, at this place, is between four and five 
miles ; a partially open country then commences with a range of respectable hills 
in the North-East; the wood in an Easterly direction widens as it proceeds, 
and extends to Lake Ladoga some miles; on the other side of the river, to the 
South-West of Alexandroskey, lies Czarkacella, contiguous to the Pulkara hills ; 
about eighteen miles distant, and much in the same direction, Pavlovsky ; at both 
these places there are imperial Summer residences; to the North is the city, 
and to the South-East, five-and-twenty miles, the town of Colpenny* The 
country included in these limits (as I have observed in a previous paper, on the 
habits of the Bough-tailed Stickleback) is of a diversified character, composed of 
wood, swampy pasturage, moss-bog, and primitively-cultivated land; yet the 
Government in this neighbourhood has in its possession three farms, which were 
made, I believe, by the direction of the late Dowager Empress, a great patroness 
and encourager of Agriculture and the arts ; they are under the superintendence 
of Englishmen, and are farmed as well as the country and climate will permit. 
Having been thus particular at the onset, in giving a description of the place 
where I resided during my stay in Russia, I shall now proceed to other notices. 
Of all months of the year in Russia, January is the most dreary and inhospit¬ 
able, though to a new comer, if he should be a native of a mild region, it carries 
a degree of interest, by practically acquainting him with the true nature of 
intense cold. He may have read and thought of it before, while luxuriating in 
u the emerald light of leaf-entangled beams,” or over a jovial seacoal fire ; but of 
which he could not form a just idea till he had tested it by personal experience. 
The mean temperature of this month, I should say, averages—18 degrees of 
Reaumur (the thermometer in general use throughout Russia, one degree of 
which is equal to 2° 25' Fahrenheit), but there are days when the mercury 
indicates—25°, and others when it is not lower than—10°. In 1836 it did not rise 
higher than—26° for a fortnight, and one morning was as low as—29°; but this 
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