Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/211

Rh ST PETERSBURG 191 and brought to St Petersburg in smaller vessels. A ship canal, completed in 1885 at a cost of 10,265,400 roubles (1,026,500), is intended to make the capital a seaport. Beginning at Cronstadt, it terminates at Gutueff Island in a harbour capable of accommodating fifty sea-going ships at a time. It is 22 feet deep, 17| miles in length, and from 70 to 120 yards broad at the bottom, and is pro- tected by huge submarine dams. Communication between the banks of the Neva is main- tained by only two permanent bridges, the Nicholas and the Alexander or Liteinyi, the latter 467 yards long; both are fine specimens of architecture. Two other bridges the Palace and the Troitskiy (720 yards) across the Great Neva connect the left bank of the mainland with Vasilyevskiy Island and the fortress of St Peter and St Paul ; but, being built on boats, they are removed during the autumn and spring, and intercourse with the islands then becomes very difficult. Several wooden or floating bridges connect the islands, while a number of stone bridges span the smaller channels ; their aggregate number is ninety. In winter, when the Neva is covered with ice 2 to 3 feet thick, temporary roadways for carriages and pedestrians are made, and artificially lighted. Numerous boats also maintain communication, and small steamers ply in summer between the more distant parts of the capital. A network of tramways (about 80 miles) inter- sects the city in all directions, reaching also the remoter islands and suburbs, and carrying about 45,000,000 pass- engers yearly. Omnibuses and public sledges maintain the traffic in winter. In 1882 hackney carriages numbered 7930 in summer and rose to 14,780 in winter, when thou- sands of peasants come in from the neighbouring villages with their small Finnish horses and plain sledges. The Neva continues frozen for an average of 147 days in the year (25th November to 21st April). It is unnavigable, however, for some time longer on account of the ice from Lake Ladoga, which is sometimes driven by easterly winds into the Neva during several days at the end of April or in the beginning of May. The climate of St Petersburg is very changeable and unhealthy. Frosts are made much more trying by the wind which accompanies them ; and westerly gales in winter bring with them oceanic moisture and warmth, and so melt the snow before and after hard frosts. The summer is hot, but short, lasting hardly more than five or six weeks ; a hot day, however, is often followed by cold weather : changes of temperature amounting to 35 Fahr. within twenty-four hours are not uncommon. In autumn a cold dampness continues for several weeks, and in spring cold and wet weather alternates with a few warm days. The following figures will give a more complete idea of the climate : January. July. The Year. Mean temperature, Fahr 15 - 4 64-0 38'6 Bainfall, inches 0'9 2'6 18'8 Amount of cloud, percentage 80 53 67 Prevailing winds S.W. W. W. Number of rainy days 12-5 12'7 150'6 Average daily range of temperature, Fahr. 2 -2 10 '2 7^7 Relative humidity 89 74 81 The bulk of St Petersburg is situated on the mainland, on the left bank of the Neva, including the best and busiest streets, the richest shops, the great bazaars and markets, the palaces, cathedrals, and theatres, as well as all the railway stations, except that of the Finland Railway. From the Liteinyi bridge to that of Nicholas I. a granite embankment runs along the left bank of the Neva, bordered by palaces and large private houses. About midway, behind a range of fine houses, stands the admiralty, the very centre of the capital. Formerly a wharf, on which Peter I. caused his first Baltic ship to be built in 1706, it is now the seat of the ministry of marine and of the hydrographical department, the new admiralty standing farther down the Neva on the same bank. A broad square, now partly a garden, surrounds the admiralty on the west, south, and east. To the west, opposite the senate, stands the fine memorial to Peter I., erected in 1782, and now backed by the cathedral of St Isaac. A bronze statue, a masterpiece by Falconet, represents the founder of the city on horseback, at full gallop, ascending a rock and pointing to the Neva ; the pedestal is a huge granite monolith, 44 feet long, 22 wide, and 27 high, brought from Lakhta, a village on the shore of the Gulf of Finland. To the south of the admiralty are several buildings of the ministry of war and to the east the Winter Palace, the work of Rastrelli (1764), a fine building of mixed style ; but its admirable proportions hide its huge dimensions. It communicates by a gallery with the Hermitage Fine Arts Gallery. A broad semicircular square, adorned by the Alexander I. column, separates the palace from the general staff and foreign ministry buildings ; the column, the work of Montferrant, is a red granite monolith, 84 feet high, supported by a huge pedestal. Being of Finnish rappa-kim (from Piterlaks), it disintegrates rapidly, and has had to be bound with massive iron rings concealed by painting. The range of palaces and private houses facing the embankment above the admiralty is interrupted by the large macadamized "Field of Mars," formerly a marsh, but transformed at incredible expense into a parade-ground, and the Lyetniy Sad (summer-garden) of Peter I. The Neva embankment is continued to the west to a little below the Nicholas bridge under the name of "English embankment," and farther down by the new admiralty buildings. The topography of St Petersburg is very simple. Three long streets, the main arteries of the capital, radiate from the admiralty, the Prospekt Nevskiy (Neva Prospect), the Gorokhovaya (Peas' Street), and the Prospekt Voznesenskiy (Ascension Prospect). Three girdles of canals, roughly speaking concentric, cross these three streets, the Moika, the Catherine, and the Fontanka ; to these a number of streets run parallel, the Great and the Little Morskaya, the Kazanskaya, the Sadovaya (Garden Street), and the Liteinaya, continued west by Prospekts Zagorodnyi and Rizh- skiy (Riga). The Prospekt Nevskiy is a very broad street running straight east-south-east for 3200 yards from the admiralty to the Moscow railway station, and thence 1650 yards farther, bending a little to the south, to the Smolnyi convent, again reaching the Neva at Kalashnikoff harbour. The part first mentioned owes its picturesque aspect to its width, its rich shops, and still more its animation. But the houses which border it architecturally leave very much to be desired. And neither the cathedral of the Virgin of Kazan (an ugly imitation on a small scale of St Peter's in Rome), nor the still uglier Gostinyi Dvor (a two-storied quadrilateral building filled with second-rate shops), nor the Anitchkoff Palace (which looks like immense barracks), nor even the Catholic and Dutch churches do anything to embellish it. About midway between the public library and the Anitchkoff Palace an elegant square conceals the old-fashioned Alexandra theatre ; a profusely adorned memorial to Catherine II. does not beautify it much. The Gorokhovaya is a narrow and badly paved street between gloomy houses occupied mostly by artisans. The Voznesenskiy, on the contrary, though as narrow as the last, has better houses. In its north part it passes into a series of large squares connected with that on which the monument of Peter I. stands. One of them is occupied by the cathedral of St Isaac (of Dalmatia) and another by the memorial to Nicholas I., the gorgeousness and bad taste of which strangely contrast with the simplicity and significance of that of Peter I. The general aspect of the cathedral is undoubtedly imposing both without and within ; its red granite colonnades are not devoid of a certain grandiose character ; but on the whole this architectural monument, built between 1818 and 1858 according to a plan of Montferrant, under the personal direction of Nicholas I., does not correspond either with its costliness (23,000,000 roubles) or with the efforts put forth in its decoration by the best Russian artists. The pictures of Briiloff, Bruni, and many others which cover its walls are deteriorating rapidly and their place is being taken by mosaics. The entire building, notwithstanding its vast foundations and pile-work, is subsiding unequally in the marshy ground, and the walls threaten soon to give way. The eastern extremity of Vasilyevskiy Island is the centre of commercial activity ; the stock exchange is situated there as well as the quays and storehouses. The remainder of the island is occu- pied chiefly by scientific and educational institutions, the academy of science, with a small observatory (where some astronomical ob- servations are carried on, notwithstanding the tremors of the earth), the university, the philological institute, the academy of the first corps of cadets, the academy of arts, the marine academy, the min- ing institute, and the central physical observatory, all facing the Neva. Peterburgskiy Island contains the fortress of St Peter and St Paul, opposite the Winter Palace, separated by a channel from its " kronverk, " the glacis of which is used as a park. The fortress is now merely a state prison. A cathedral which stands within the fortress is the burial-place of the emperors and the imperial family. The mint is also situated within the fortress. The remainder of the island is meanly built, and is the refuge of the poorer officials (tchinovniks) and of the intellectual proletariat. Its northern part, separated from the main island by a narrow channel, bears the name of Apothecaries' Island, and is occupied by a botanical garden of great scientific value and several fine private gardens and parks. Krestovskiy, Elaghin, and Kamennyi Islands, as also the opposite right bank of the Great Nevka (Staraya and Novaya Derevnya), are occupied by public gardens and parks and by summer houses (datchis). Owing to the heat and dust during the short summer the middle-class inhabitants and the numerous officials and clerks emigrate to the datchis, the wealthier families to the islands, and the poorer to Staraya and Novaya Derevnya Polustrovo, Kushe-