1836, the temporary cheap
theatre of boards was burned, at the cost of one hundred and twenty-six
lives and many injured persons, which resulted in these dangerous
_balagani_ and other holiday amusements being removed to the spacious
parade-ground known as the Empress's Meadow.

If we pass round the Admiralty to the Neva, we shall find its frozen
surface teeming with life. Sledge roads have been laid out on it, marked
with evergreen bushes, over which a _yamtschik_ will drive us with his
_troika_ fleet as the wind, to Kronstadt, twenty miles away. Plank
walks, fringed with street lanterns, have been prepared for pedestrians.
Broad ice paths have been cleared, whereon the winter ferry-boats ply,
--green garden-chairs, holding one or more persons, furnished with warm
lap-robes, and propelled by stout _muzhiks_ on skates, who will
transport us from shore to shore for the absurdly small sum of less than
a cent apiece, though a ride with the reindeer (now a strange sight in
the capital), at the Laplanders' encampment, costs much more.

It is hard to tear ourselves from the charms of the river, with its
fishing, ice-cutting, and many other interesting sights always in
progress. But of all the scenes, that which we may witness on Epiphany
Day--the "Jordan," or Blessing of the Waters, in commemoration of
Christ's baptism in the Jordan--is the most curious and typically
Russian.

After mass, celebrated by the Metropolitan, in the cathedral of the
Winter Palace, whose enormous reddish-ochre mass we perceive rising
above the frost-jeweled trees of the Alexander Garden, to our right as
we stand at the head of the Nevsky Prospekt, the Emperor, his heir, his
brothers, uncles, and other great personages emerge in procession upon
the quay. Opposite the Jordan door of the palace a scarlet, gold, and
blue pavilion, also called the "Jordan," has been erected over the ice.
Thither the procession moves, headed by the Metropolitan and the richly
vestured clergy, their mitres gleaming with gems, bearing crosses and
church banners, and the imperial choir, clad in crimson and gold,
chanting as they go. The Empress and her ladies, clad in full Court
costume at midday, look on from the palace windows. After brief prayers
in the pavilion, all standing with bared heads, the Metropolitan dips
the great gold cross in the rushing waters of the Neva, through a hole
prepared in the thick, opalescent, green ice, and the guns on the
opposite shore thu