ver,
remained in Russia, where he lived a long time in obscurity.

One day, Peter, at one of his summer palaces of Ismaelhof, saw upon
the shore of the lake the remains of a pleasure boat of peculiar
construction. He had never before seen any boat but such as was
propelled by oars. The peculiarity of the structure of this arrested
his attention, and being informed that it was constructed for sails as
well as oars, he ordered it to be repaired, that he might make trial
of it. It so chanced that the shipwright, Brandt, from Holland, who
had built the boat, was found, and the tzar, to his great delight,
enjoyed, for the first time in his life, the pleasures of a sail. He
immediately gave directions for the boat to be transported to the
great lake near the convent of the Trinity, and here he ordered two
frigates and three yachts to be built. For months he amused himself
piloting his little fleet over the waves of the lake. Like many a
plebeian boy, the tzar had now acquired a passion for the sea, and he
longed to get a sight of the ocean.

With this object in view, in 1694 he set out on a journey of nearly a
thousand miles to Archangel, on the shores of the White Sea. Taking
his shipwrights with him, he had a small vessel constructed, in which
he embarked for the exploration of the Frozen Ocean, a body of water
which no sovereign had seen before him. A Dutch man-of-war, which
chanced to be in the harbor at Archangel, and all the merchant fleet
there accompanied the tzar on this expedition. The sovereign himself
had already acquired much of the art of working a ship, and on this
trip devoted all his energies to improvement in the science and
practical skill of navigation.

While the tzar was thus turning his attention to the subject of a
navy, he at the same time was adopting measures of extraordinary vigor
for the reorganization of the army. Hitherto the army had been
composed of bands of vassals, poorly armed and without discipline, led
by their lords, who were often entirely without experience in the arts
of war. Peter commenced, at his country residence, with a company of
fifty picked men, who were put through the most thorough drill by
General Gordon, a Scotchman of much military ability, who had secured
the confidence of the tzar. Some of the sons of the lords were chosen
as their officers, but these young nobles were all trained by the same
military discipline, Peter setting them the example by passing through
all