nnect the headwaters of all the
important rivers of Russia. The Volga by this system communicates
with the White Sea, the Baltic, and the Euxine,--statistics showing
that no less than fifteen thousand vessels navigate this great river
annually.

While we are placing these interesting facts before the reader
relating to the material greatness and facilities of the Empire, we
are also approaching its ancient capital, upon which the far-reaching
past has laid its consecrating hand. It is found to stand upon a vast
plain, through which winds the Moskva River, from which the city
derives its name. The villages naturally become more populous as we
advance, and gilded domes and cupolas occasionally loom up above the
tree-tops on either side of the road, indicating a Greek church here
and there amid isolated communities. As in approaching Cairo one sees
first the pyramids of Gheezeh and afterwards the graceful minarets
and towers of the Egyptian city gleaming through the golden haze, so
as we gradually emerge from the thinly-inhabited, half-cultivated
Russian plains and draw near the capital, first there comes into view
the massive towers of the Kremlin and the Church of Our Saviour with
its golden dome, followed by the hundreds of glittering steeples,
belfries, towers, and star-gilded domes which characterize the
ancient city. We were told that the many-towered sacred edifices of
Russia have a religious significance in the steeples, domes, and
spires with which they are so profusely decorated. Usually the middle
projection is the most lofty, and is surrounded by four others, the
forms and positions varying with a significance too subtile for one
to understand who is not initiated in the tenets of the Greek Church.
Though some of these temples have simply a cupola in the shape of an
inverted bowl, terminating in a gilded point capped by a cross and
crescent, few of them have less than five or six superstructures, and
some have sixteen, of the most whimsical device,--bright, gilded
chains depending from them, affixed to the apex of each pinnacle.
When one looks for the first time upon the roofs of the Muscovite
city as it lies under the glare of the warm summer sun, the scene is
both fascinating and confusing. The general aspect is far more
picturesque at Moscow than at the capital on the Neva, because the
city is here located upon undulating and in some parts even hilly
ground; besides which St. Petersburg is decidedly Europea