nnish
names equivalent to Island of Hares, Island of Buffaloes, and the like.
Overgrown with thickets, their surfaces marshy, liable to annual
overflow, inhabited only by a few Finnish fishermen, who fled from their
huts to the mainland when the waters rose, they were far from promising;
yet these islands took Peter's fancy as a suitable site for a commercial
port, and with his usual impetuosity he plunged into the business of
making a city to order.

[Illustration: ST. PETERSBURG HARBOR, NEVA RIVER.]

In truth, he fell in love with the spot, though what he saw in it to
admire is not so clear. In summer mud ruled there supreme: the very name
Neva is Finnish for "mud." During four months of the year ice took the
place of mud, and the islands and stream were fettered fast. The country
surrounding was largely a desert, its barren plains alternating with
forests whose only inhabitants were wolves. Years after the city was
built, wolves prowled into its streets and devoured two sentries in
front of one of the government buildings. Moscow lay four hundred miles
away, and the country between was bleak and almost uninhabited. Even
to-day the traveller on leaving St. Petersburg finds himself in a
desert. The great plain over which he passes spreads away in every
direction, not a steeple, not a tree, not a man or beast, visible upon
its bare expanse. There is no pasturage nor farming land. Fruits and
vegetables can scarcely be grown; corn must be brought from a distance.
Rye is an article of garden culture in St. Petersburg, cabbages and
turnips are its only vegetables, and a beehive there is a curiosity.

Yet, as has been said, Peter was attracted to the place, which in one of
his letters he called his "paradise." It may have reminded him of
Holland, the scene of his nautical education. The locality had a certain
sacredness in Russian tradition, being looked upon as the most ancient
Russian ground. By the mouth of the Neva had passed Rurik and his
fellows in their journeys across the Varangian sea,--_their own sea_.
The czar was willing to restore to Sweden all his conquests in Livonia
and Esthonia, but the Neva he would not yield. From boyhood he had
dreamed of giving Russia a navy and opening it up to the world's
commerce, and here was a ready opening to the waters of the Baltic and
the distant Atlantic.

St. Petersburg owed its origin to a whim; but it was the whim of a man
whose will swayed the movements of millions. He