s kept constantly burning
highly-flavored pastilles as incense, permeating the very streets
with a constant odor of musk, mingled with fragrant spices.

St. Petersburg is the fifth city in point of population in Europe,
but its very existence seemed to us to be constantly threatened on
account of its low situation between two enormous bodies of water. A
westerly gale and high tide in the Gulf of Finland occurring at the
time of the annual breaking up of the ice in the Neva, would surely
submerge this beautiful capital and cause an enormous loss of human
life. The Neva, which comes sweeping with such resistless force
swiftly through the city, is fed by that vast body of water Lake
Ladoga, covering an area of over six thousand square miles at a
level of about sixty feet above the sea. In 1880 the waters rose
between ten and eleven feet above the ordinary level, driving
people from their basements and cellars, as well as from the villas
and humbler dwellings of the lower islands below the city. However,
St. Petersburg has existed for one hundred and eighty years, and it
may last as much longer, though it is not a city of Nature's
building, so to speak. It is not a healthy city; indeed the death
rate is higher than that of any other European capital. The deaths
largely exceed the births, as in Madrid; and it is only by
immigration that the population of either the Spanish or the Russian
capital is kept up. Young men from the rural districts come to
St. Petersburg to better their fortunes, and all the various
nationalities of the empire contribute annually to swell its fixed
population. In the hotels and restaurants many Tartar youth are
found, being easily distinguished by their dark eyes and hair, as
well as by their diminutive stature, contrasting with the blond
complexion and stout build of the native Slav. Preference is given
to these Tartars in situations such as we have named because of
their temperate habits, which they manage to adhere to even when
surrounded by a people so generally given to intoxication. Among the
mercantile class there is a large share of Germans, whose numbers
are being yearly increased; and we must also add to these local
shopkeepers, especially of fancy goods, a liberal sprinkling of
French nationality, against whom popular prejudice has subsided.

What the Gotha Canal is to Sweden, the Neva and its joining
water-ways are to Russia. Through Lake Ladoga and its extensive
ramifications of con