United States or Zambia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The Neva, a short but deep and wide stream, which carries to the sea the waters of the great lakes Ladoga, Onega, and Ilmen, breaks up near its mouth and makes its way into the Gulf of Finland through numerous channels, between which lie a series of islands. These then bore Finnish names equivalent to Island of Hares, Island of Buffaloes, and the like.
We Russians had from our childhood heard of that sinister fortress, the walls of which rise sheer from the black waters of Lake Ladoga that place where the cells of the political prisoners, victims of the thousand and one intrigues of the Russian bureaucracy, consequent upon the autocracy of the Tsar, are deep beneath the lake's surface, so that they can when it is willed by the Governor or those higher Ministers who express their devilish desire be flooded at will.
The Neva is forty miles long and a third of a mile broad, and comes from Lake Ladoga. It is spanned by four fine bridges, always crowded with carriages and foot passengers, and in summer numerous small steamboats ply up and down. In winter thick ice lies on the river during four months. St.
While incessantly engaged in these arduous operations, the emperor was seized with a painful and dangerous sickness a strangury which confined him to his room for four months. Feeling a little better one day, he ordered his yacht to be brought up to the Neva, opposite his palace, and embarked to visit some of his works on Lake Ladoga.
It followed the coast of the Baltic until the Neva was reached. Then it crossed Lake Ladoga and went southward along the Volkhov river. Then through Lake Ilmen and up the small Lovat river. Then there was a short portage until the Dnieper was reached. Then down the Dnieper into the Black Sea. The Norsemen knew of this road at a very early date.
What the Gotha Canal is to Sweden, the Neva and its joining waters are to Russia. Through Lake Ladoga and its ramifications of connecting canals and rivers, it opens communication with an almost unlimited region of inland territory, while the mouth of this river receives through the gulf the commerce of the world.
The Neva, which comes sweeping through the city with such resistless force, is fed by that large body of water, Lake Ladoga, which covers an area of over six thousand square miles at a level of about sixty feet above that of the sea. However, St. Petersburg has existed in security for nearly two centuries, and it may possibly exist as much longer, independent of possible floods.
To the east of the British Isles the North Sea, the Baltic, and Lakes Ladoga and Onega correspond in striking fashion to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the river of the same name, and the Great Lakes from Ontario to Superior. Next the indented shores of western France and the peninsula of Spain resemble our own indented coast and the peninsula of Florida.
Once within that dreaded fortress, the terrible oubliettes of which are below the surface of the Lake Ladoga, my identity would be lost and I should be quickly forgotten. From Schlüsselburg no prisoner ever returned! Would any of the conspiring trio, whose tool I had been, raise a finger to save me?
Vessels could, however, come from the interior by way of Lake Ladoga; but when for several days or more the wind was from the west, these vessels were all kept back, and then sometimes the provisions fell short, and the men were reduced to great distress.
Word Of The Day