Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

where the fair sex so completely dispenses with coquettish finery as in Russia (I speak only of the female peasants and of the corner of the land that I have seen). Nevertheless these women are the mothers of the soldiers of which the Emperor is so proud, and of the handsome coachmen of the streets of Petersburg.

It should be observed that the greater number of the women in the government of Petersburg are of Finnish extraction. I am told that in the interior of the country I shall see very good-looking female peasants.

The road from Petersburg to Schlusselburg is bad in many parts: there are sometimes deep beds of sand, sometimes holes of mud to be passed, over which planks have been very uselessly thrown. What is yet worse, are the small logs of wood rudely laid across each other, on certain marshy portions of the route, which would swallow up any other foundation. This rustic, ill-joined and movable flooring dances under the wheels; and frequent broken bones and broken carriages on Russian grandes routes, testify to the wisdom of reducing equipages to their most simple forms, to something about as primitive as the telega. I observed also several dilapidated bridges, one of which seemed dangerous to pass over. Human life is a small matter in Russia. `\Vith sixty millions of children how can there be the bowels of a father ?

On my arrival at Schlusselburg, where I was expected, the engineer who has the direction of the sluices received me.

The weather was raw and gloomy. My carriage stopped before the comfortable wood-house of the