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but not one of them is free from ice. Only from the
ports on the Black Sea and the Sea of Azof is navigation
almost always free, but these do not afford Russia free
approach to the outside world, since vessels can always
be stopped at the Dardanelles, so long as Constantinople
is in the possession of the Turk. This accounts for the
constant and ever increasing desire of Russia to possess
Constantinople.
By the founding of St. Petersburg the Tsar desired
to bring his country nearer to the west. The city, as has
been said, was at once a symbol of his determination
and the means for its execution. Although at the same
time he allowed a canal to be constructed between the
Neva and the Volga, he strove to force the wealth of the
land from the east and south up against the current,
and to open an outlet for it to the west.
St. Petersburg is a city intersected by an enormous
number of canals and streams; it is built in a swamp
and surrounded by a desert. It is an artificial city,
without any country naturally tributary, and it derives the
most of its support from officials and soldiers, although
its trade and manufactures are of late more important.
It is an unhealthy city, in which, as in the old capital of
the empire also, the number of deaths is so much larger
than the number of births that the population, suffering
a loss of one or two thousand a year, would die out, were
it not for a constant immigration. It is a half-educated
city, in which, at the present time, three hundred
thousand of the nine hundred thousand inhabitants cannot
read or write. Finally, it is a beautiful city, in grand
style, with half European and half barbarian splendor.
For the foundation of this city in the five years from
1712 to 1716, Peter the Great caused more than one
hundred and fifty thousand workmen to be brought into the
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