The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1886-12-18
THE NEVA RIVER.


the Beauty, Purity and Picturesquebess OF
This Northern Water-Course.
A mere neck of earth separates the
Russian capital from the great inland
sea of Ladoga, and through more than
forty intervening versts of forest land,
green and wayy with the trembling as
pen, the birch, the alder and the silver
pine, the Neva moves majestically
down its deep channel, by villages and
clearings, past scattered communes
and struggling huts, between sounding
wood-Tards and busy factories, till at
last, gliding along the famed granite
quays of the imperial city, it pours by
five broad mouths and narrow outlets
innumerable into the Gulf of Finland.
No Russian river has the beauty, the
purity, the picturesqueness, which are
the attributes of this northern water
course; YET to fully appreciate the no.
bleness of its aspect in the warm sea-
sen, one must be familiar wi "a its win
try appearance, and above all wit
ness its vernal emancipation from
the letters of frost by ukase
of the " father of warmth" the
Slav Apollo, DazhBog himself For
nearly six months a ringing highway
for man and beast, the Neva grows I'M
safe for travel late in the month of
April, and has usually resumed its free
dom by the beginning of May; yet the
opening of the attack on the crystal
I tna ,o.anoAac 40 Of 20
melting by weeks. A month sometimes
elapses before the solar rays have begun
to sensibly thin the ice crust, and for a
month of seeming defiance of the forces
of renaissance droskies pursue their
chosen paths over the CONCEALED river,
pedestrians continue to traverse it in
chair slides or on foot, the heavy wagons
of merchant and trader 90 rumbling
over in the same endless procession,
and the Samoyeis, those Gypsies of the
north, cling with their reindeers to the
camping ground of their winter exile
on the frozen stream, which is soon to
bear them back to their homes in the
Arctic circle.
The metamorphosis then follows
with swiftness truly Russian. The
ltb-b SClOWb Chtlu ClttS po VI lIOltCuldl
cohesion are drawn in single night;
the thickest lce-plate then opens to its
solar enemy thousand lines of march.
In the morning, with firm. quick steps,
you may safely traverse the Neya still
ice-cOvered; at noon, your return is
barred by clear, swelling stream,
whose whilom bonds have turned to
dancing liquid facets, from which the
sun laughs back its light and its tri-
umph. True, the ice is not yet wholly
gone, but it meets the eye henceforth
purely as a spectacle-th offering not
of river, but of lake. This new
ice is the product of more northern
waters, the snowy blocks and bergs of
Ladoga, glittering debris of an unequal
combat that every spring renews. For
some days after the breaking-up along
the Neva. in the interval between
the beginning of open and that
of safe navigation. the river channel is
thronged with broken strata, cleft
blocks, truncated pillars, shivercd col
umns; with spires and spears and
shafts; nay. with all shapeful and
shapeless masses, that half undergo
and half escape degelation in the an
nual return of heat to the tar north.
Slowly the rank and file of this shining
host glide past, driving back to shelter
fleet of venturesome ferrv-boats, bat
tering the bridge piers with dangerous
force and frequency, scraping the
quays with sonorous attrition, and
emitting throughout the duration Of
their passage a strange rustling,
crunching sound BY day striking, by
night solemn and weird, this scene
passes in its turn. and for six months
the Neva presents the aspect which |
have described in the opening para
graph. -Edn1und Noble, fD atlantic.