agged it to a gibbet, on
which it was hung. The affair ended in the Cossacks choosing a new
chief.

The remainder of Mazeppa's story may soon be told. The battle of
Pultowa, fought, it is said, by his advice, ended the military career of
the great Swedish general. The Cossack chief made his escape, with the
King of Sweden, into Turkish territory, and the reward which the czar
offered for his body, dead or alive, was never claimed. Mentchikof took
what revenge he could by capturing and sacking his capital city,
Baturin, while throughout Russia his name was anathematized from the
pulpit. Traitor in his old days, and a fugitive in a foreign land, the
disgrace of his action seemed to weigh heavily upon the mind of the old
chief of the Ukraine, and in the following year he put an end to the
wretchedness of his life by poison.

_A WINDOW OPEN TO EUROPE._

Peter the Great hated Moscow. It was to him the embodiment of that old
Russia which he was seeking to reform out of existence. Had he been able
to work his own will in all things, he would never have set foot within
its walls; but circumstances are stronger than men, even though the
latter be Russian czars. In one respect Peter set himself against
circumstance, and built Russia a capital in a locality seemingly lacking
in all natural adaptation for a city.

In the early days of the eighteenth century his armies captured a small
Swedish fort on Lake Ladoga near the river Neva. The locality pleased
him, and he determined to build on the Neva a city which should serve
Russia as a naval station and commercial port in the north. Why he
selected this spot it is not easy to say. Better localities for his
purpose might have been easily chosen. There was old Novgorod, a centre
of commerce during many centuries of the past, which it would have been
a noble tribute to ancient Russian history to revive. There was Riga, a
city better situated for the Baltic commerce. But Peter would have none
of these; he wanted a city of his own, one that should carry his name
down through the ages, that should rival the Alexandria of Alexander the
Great, and he chose for it a most inauspicious and inhospitable site.

The Neva, a short but deep and wide stream, which carries to the sea
the waters of the great lakes Ladoga, Onega, and Ilmen, breaks up near
its mouth and makes its way into the Gulf of Finland through numerous
channels, between which lie a series of islands. These then bore Fi