e end of
the Petersburg world. But at that epoch the Nevsky was decorated with
rows of fine large trees, which have now disappeared to the last twig.
The Fontanka River, or canal, over which we stand, offers the best of
the many illustrations of the manner in which Peter the Great, with his
ardent love of water and Dutch ways, and his worthy successors have
turned natural disadvantages into advantages and objects of beauty. The
Fontanka was the largest of the numerous marshy rivers in that Arctic
bog selected by Peter I. for his new capital, which have been deepened,
widened, faced with cut granite walls, and utilized as means of cheap
communication between distant parts of the city, and as relief channels
for the inundating waves of the Gulf of Finland, which rise, more or
less, every year, from August to November, at the behest of the
southwest gale. That this last precaution is not superfluous is shown by
the iron flood-mark set into the wall of the Anitchkoff Palace, on the
southern shore of the Fontanka, as on so many other public buildings in
the city, with "1824" appended,--the date of one celebrated and
disastrous inundation which attained in some places the height of
thirteen feet and seven inches. This particular river derived its name
from the fact that it was trained to carry water and feed the fountains
in Peter the Great's favorite Summer Garden, of which only one now
remains.

At the close of the last century, and even later, persons out of favor
at Court, or nobles who had committed misdemeanors, were banished to the
southern shores of the Fontanka, as to a foreign land. Among the
amusements at the _datchas_,--the wooden country houses,--in the
wilder recesses of the vast parks which studded both shores, the chase
after wild animals, and from bandits, played a prominent part.

The stretch which we have traversed on our way from the monastery, and
which is punctuated at the corner of the canal and the Prospekt by the
pleasing brick and granite palace of the Emperor's brother, Grand Duke
Sergiei Alexandrovitch, which formerly belonged to Prince
Byeloselsky-Byelozersky, was the suburb belonging to Lieutenant-Colonel
Anitchkoff, who built the first bridge, of wood, in 1715. As late as the
reign of Alexander I., all persons entering the town were required to
inscribe their names in the register kept at the barrier placed at this
bridge. Some roguish fellows having conspired to cast ridicule on this
custom,