Daily Yellowstone journal., 1886-12-17
THE CHURCHES OF MOSCOW.


q City of Spires, Domes, and Minarets-
Wonders of the Krsmlin.
am informed that there are in Mos
COW about 1000 Greek churches. They
are a compost Of Catholic, Moham-
medan, and Oriental architecture, and
probably the most beautiful churches in
the world. When the ornate and won
derful st. Basil church was completed
the architect was asked by his master,
Ivan the Terrible, il that effort was his
very best; If, under any circumstances
or for any consideration with any
amount Of money, he could construct a
more beautiful edifice. The reply was
that he could MOTTO make a more
beautiful structure would be impossible.
Thereupon the architects eyes were put
out that even he should not copy this
sublimely beautiful creation.
think that not one of those thousand
churches has less than three minarets
and domes. Most of them have five,
some have twenty -five-always an odd
number-for grand central effect-and
some have in the neighborhood Of fifty
to 100. They are colored white, green.
red, or blue or are colored with silver
and gold. Most of them have chimes Of
bells, and presume that there are in the
city of Moscow, 5000 bells. 1t was but
recently that stood on the eminence-
about six miles west of the city-where
Napoleon stood that eventful day when
he first beheld those 5000 minarets,
spires, and domes, and the kremlin's
golden roofs glistening in the sun, and
whence he surveyed the treasurers
which he thought would soon be at his
disposal. l traversed the same road
which he took when he marched his
500, 900 men to an expected victory that
proved to be the most melancholy de-
feat recorded on the pages of history.
The immense treasures of the museums
in the Kremlin had been removed and
the sullen Muscovites applied the torch
to their own devoted homes. The sequel
is well known. Moscow has been re-
built and its treasures and relics have
been returned, supplemented by the
emperor's cannons and flags and numer-
Gus trophies taken from the fleeing in
vaders.
To enumerate the wonders of those
kremlin museums is impossible. To
describe any of them is to select one
jeweled crown out of many, one
diamond out of millions. Silver
and gold. malachite, lapislazuli, jasper,
rubies, diamonds, and sapphires are not
only worked into crowns, thrones, and
vestments in almost endless profusion.
but they are even formed into furniture
and make fireplaces, walls. and ceilings.
Just there is the tocsin bell which
sounded the signal for plying the torch to
the city. Here are the red stairs upon
which Napoleon assembled the throne of
the Romeloff kings. There is the sword
with which the Terrible Ivan beheaded
his own sons. Here the furs that once
enveloped the form Of Catherine the
Noble. And here again, are the tools
with which Peter the Great worked
when he built ships and empires-for it
was his knowledge of the wants of his
people that gave them the mighty i'm
pulse which yet jars the two continents.
Then We were shown through the
great throne-room, the silver rooms, the
gold rooms, the pink rooms, the white
rooms, the blue rooms, the jasper rooms,
and the crystal rooms, and then We
wound up intricate staircases to the Sc
cret trial room-still higher. to the dun
geon and execution rooms, where voices
were stifled without remorse and where
cries could not be heard by sympathiz.
ing friends.
The far-famed bell exceeded my
school-day expectation as to size, and
not to mislead in speaking of it l tried
my measuring tape around it. 1t at first
hung-if it ever was hung-on a low
wooden frame within the Kremlin walls.
The frame was accidentally burned, and
when the bell fell to the ground a piece
seven feet in hight was broken from its
disk. was not there when the event
occurred, but I venture the assertion
that that bell, with downward orifice
of twenty-six feet diameter, was not
buried in the ground, as historians rec
ord was the case. The bell measures
seventy-eight feet in circumference and
is, think. about twenty feet high. /
am aware that cyclopedists give the meas
urement as sixty feet in diameter and
nineteen feet three inches as the hight.
Against this simply set my own meas.
urement. The iron clapper is about nine
feet long, and is said to weigh forty
pools, or 1,6OO pounds. did not lift it.
The statement is. / think, quite correct.
-Dnpaas parnaa In Rroollun Eanla