A Journey Due North, Notes of a Residence in Russia 1856

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Russian side, I can see white houses and the posts of the telegraph. About noon on Tuesday, the twentieth of May, turning at the gangway to walk towards the steamer's head, I see a sight that does my eyes good. I have the advantage of being extremely short-sighted, and a view does not grow, but starts upon me. And now, all fresh and blue, and white, and sparkling and dancing in the sunlight, I see a scene that Mr. Stanfield might paint a grove of masts, domes and steeples, and factory chimneys; a myriad of trim yachts and smaller craft, and, dotting the hright blue water like the Seven Castles of the Devil, with tier above tier of embrasures bristling with cannon, the granite forts of the impregnable Cronstadt. There is a big guard-ship behind us, and forts and guns on every side, and I feel that I am in for it. 'Lads, sharpen your cutlasses/ was the signal of the Admiral who didn't breakfast in Cronstadt and dine in St. Petersburg. Let me put a fresh nib to my goosequill, and see what I can do, in my humble way, to make some little impression on those granite walls. I LAND AT CRONSTADT. We had no sooner cast anchor in the harbour of Cronstadt (it needed something to divert my attention, for I had been staring at the forts and their embrasures, especially at one circular one shelving from the top, like a Stilton cheese in tolerably advanced cut, till the whole sky swarmed before me, a vast plain of black dots), than we were invaded by the Russians. If the naval forces of his imperial majesty Alexander the Second display half as much alacrity in boarding the enemies' ships in the next naval engagement as did this agile boarding-party of policemen and customhouse-officers, no British captain need trouble himself to nail his colours to the mast. The best thing be can do ...