Morning journal and courier., 1886-12-22
A Russian River.

A mere neck of earth separates the Rus
 sian capital from the great inland sea of La
 doga, and through more than forty interven-
 ing versts of forest land, green and wavy
 with the trembling aspen. the alder and sil-
 yer pine, the Neva moves majestically down
 it's deep channel, by villages and clearances,
 past scattered communes and struggling huts,
 between sounding woodyards and busy facto-
 ries, till at last, gliding along the famed
 granite quays of the imperial city, it pours
 by five broad mouths and narrow outlets in-
 numerable into the Gulf of Finland.
 No Russian river nas the beauty, the puri-
 ty, the picturesqueness, says writer in the
 Atlantic Monthly, which are the attributes of
 this northern water course; yet to fully ap-
 preciate the nobleness of it's aspect in the
 warm season one must be familiar with it's
 wintry appearance, and above all witness it's
 venerable emancipation from the letters of
 frost by ukase of the sfather of warmth,
 the Slav Apollo, Dazh Bog himself. For
 nearly six months ringing highway for man
 and beast, the Neya grows unsafe for travel
 late in the month of April, and has usually
 resumed it's freedom by the beginning of
 May; yet the opening of the attack on the
 crystalline mass precedes the moment of its
 melting by weeks A month sometimes
 elapses before the solar rays have begun to
 sensibly thin the ice crust, and for month of seeming defiance of the forces of renais-
 sance draskies pursue their chosen paths over the congealed river, pedestrians continue to
 traverse it in chair slides or on foot, the
 heavy wagons of the merchant and trader go
 in endless procession, and the samoyeds,
 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 a
 swiftness truly Russian The last screws and clasps of molecular cohesion are drawn in single night; the thickest ce-plate then opens to it's solar enemy thousand lines of march. In the morning, with quick, firm steps you may safely travel the Neva, still ice covered; at noon your return is barred by a clear, swelling stream, whose whilom bonds l have turned to dancing liquid facets, from which the sun laughs back it's light and it's triumph. True the ice is not yet wholly gone, but it meets the eye henceforth purely as & spectacle-the offering not of 8 river, but of lake. The new ice is the product of more northern waters, the snowy hlopks and burgs 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 begin
 ming of open and that of safe navigation,
 the river channel is thronged with broken | strata, cleft blocks, truneated pillars, shiv- cred columns: with spires and spears and l shafts; nay, with all shapeful and shapeless masses, that half undergo and half escape delegation in the annual return of heat to | the far north. Slowly the rank and file of this shining host glide past, driving back to shelter fleet of venturesome ferrybeats, battering the bridge piers with dangerous force and frequency, scraping the quays with a sonorous attrition, and emitting through out the duration of their passage & strange, rustling, crunching sound. By day striking, by night solemn and weird, this scene passes in it's turn, and for six months the Neva pre- sents the aspect which have described in the opening paragraph.