ce, it was simply a shipyard, open to the Neva, and
inclosed on three sides by low wooden structures, surrounded by
stone-faced earthworks, moats, and palisades. Hither Peter was wont to
come of a morning, after having routed his ministers out of bed to hold
privy council at three and four o'clock, to superintend the work and to
lend a hand himself. The first stone buildings were erected in 1726,
after his death. In the early years of the present century, Alexander I.
rebuilt this stately and graceful edifice, after the plans of the
Russian architect Zakharoff, who created the beautiful tower adorned
with Russian sculptures, crowned by a golden spire, in the centre of the
immense facade, fourteen hundred feet long, which forms a feature
inseparable from the vista of the Prospekt for the greater part of its
length, to the turn at the Znamenskaya Square. On this spire, at the
present day, flags and lanterns warn the inhabitants of low-lying
districts in the capital of the rate at which the water is rising during
inundations. In case of serious danger, the flags are reinforced by
signal guns from the fortress. But in Peter I.'s day, these flags and
guns bore exactly the opposite meaning to the unhappy nobles whom the
energetic Emperor was trying to train into rough-weather sailors. To
their trembling imaginations these signal orders to assemble for a
practice sail signified, "Come out and be drowned!" since they were
obliged to embark in the crafts too generously given to them by Peter,
and cruise about until their leader (who delighted in a storm) saw fit
to return. There is a story of one unhappy wight, who was honored by the
presence aboard his craft of a very distinguished and very seasick
Persian, making his first acquaintance with the pleasures of yachting,
and who spent three days without food, tacking between Petersburg and
Kronstadt, in the vain endeavor to effect a landing during rough
weather.

When the present Admiralty was built, a broad and shady boulevard was
organized on the site of the old glacis and covered way, and later
still, when the break in the quay was filled in, and the shipbuilding
transferred to the New Admiralty a little farther down the river, the
boulevard was enlarged into the New Alexander Garden, one of the finest
squares in Europe. It soon became the fashionable promenade, and the
centre of popular life as well, by virtue of the merry-makings which
took place. Here, during the Carnival of