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The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 by Various

V >> Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864



[Transcriber's note: Footnotes moved to end of text.]




THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. XIII.--MAY, 1864.--NO. LXXIX.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by TICKNOR AND
FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.

* * * * *

A CRUISE ON LAKE LADOGA.


"Dear Q.,--The steamboat Valamo is advertised to leave on Tuesday, the
26th, (July 8th, New Style,) for Serdopol, at the very head of Lake
Ladoga, stopping on the way at Schluesselburg, Konewitz Island, Kexholm,
and the island and monastery of Valaam. The anniversary of Saints
Sergius and Herrmann, miracle-workers, will be celebrated at the
last-named place on Thursday, and the festival of the Apostles Peter and
Paul on Friday. If the weather is fine, the boat will take passengers to
the Holy Island. The fare is nine rubles for the trip. You can be back
again in St. Petersburg by six o'clock on Saturday evening. Provisions
can be had on board, but (probably) not beds; so, if you are luxurious
in this particular, take along your own sheets, pillow-cases, and
blankets. I intend going, and depend upon your company. Make up your
mind by ten o'clock, when I will call for your decision.

"Yours,

"P."

I laid down the note, looked at my watch, and found that I had an hour
for deliberation before P.'s arrival. "Lake Ladoga?" said I to myself;
"it is the largest lake in Europe,--I learned that at school. It is full
of fish; it is stormy; and the Neva is its outlet. What else?" I took
down a geographical dictionary, and obtained the following additional
particulars: The name _Lad'oga_ (not _Lado'ga,_ as it is pronounced in
America) is Finnish, and means "new." The lake lies between 60 deg. and 61 deg.
45' north latitude, is 175 versts--about 117 miles--in length, from
north to south, and 100 versts in breadth; receives the great river
Volkhoff on the south, the Svir, which pours into it the waters of Lake
Onega, on the east, and the overflow of nearly half the lakes of
Finland, on the west; and is, in some parts, fourteen hundred feet deep.

Vainly, however, did I ransack my memory for the narrative of any
traveller who had beheld and described this lake. The red hand-book,
beloved of tourists, did not even deign to notice its existence. The
more I meditated on the subject, the more I became convinced that here
was an untrodden corner of the world, lying within easy reach of a great
capital, yet unknown to the eyes of conventional sight-seers. The name
of Valaam suggested that of Barlaam, in Thessaly, likewise a Greek
monastery; and though I had never heard of Sergius and Herrmann, the
fact of their choosing such a spot was the beginning of a curious
interest in their history. The very act of poring over a map excites the
imagination: I fell into conjectures about the scenery, vegetation, and
inhabitants, and thus, by the time P. arrived, was conscious of a
violent desire to make the cruise with him. To our care was confided an
American youth, whom I shall call R.,--we three being, as we afterwards
discovered, the first of our countrymen to visit the northern portion of
the lake.

The next morning, although it was cloudy and raw, R. and I rose betimes,
and were jolted on a _droshky_ through the long streets to the Valamo's
landing-place. We found a handsome English-built steamer, with tonnage
and power enough for the heaviest squalls, and an after-cabin so
comfortable that all our anticipations of the primitive modes of travel
were banished at once. As men not ashamed of our health, we had decided
to omit the sheets and pillow-cases, and let the tooth-brush answer as
an evidence of our high civilization; but the broad divans and velvet
cushions of the cabin brought us back to luxury in spite of ourselves.
The captain, smoothly shaven and robust, as befitted his
station,--English in all but his eyes, which were thoroughly
Russian,--gave us a cordial welcome in passable French. P. drove up
presently, and the crowd on the floating pier rapidly increased, as the
moment of departure approached. Our fellow-pilgrims were mostly peasants
and deck--passengers: two or three officers, and a score of the
bourgeois, were divided, according to their means, between the first and
second cabins. There were symptoms of crowding, and we hastened to put
in preemption-claims for the bench on the port--side, distributing our
travelling sacks and pouches along it, as a guard against squatters. The
magic promise of _na chai_ (something to buy tea with) further inspired
the waiters with a peculiar regard for our interest, so that, leaving
our important possessions in their care, we went on deck to witness the
departure.

By this time the Finnish sailors were hauling in the slack hawsers, and
the bearded stevedores on the floating quay tugged at the gangway. Many
of our presumed passengers had only come to say good-bye, which they
were now waving and shouting from the shore. The rain fell dismally, and
a black, hopeless sky settled down upon the Neva. But the Northern
summer, we knew, is as fickle as the Southern April, and we trusted that
Sergius and Herrmann, the saints of Valaam, would smooth for us the
rugged waters of Ladoga. At last the barking little bell ceased to snarl
at the tardy pilgrims. The swift current swung our bow into the stream,
and, as we moved away, the crowd on deck uncovered their heads, not to
the bowing friends on the quay, but to the spire of a church which rose
to view behind the houses fronting the Neva. Devoutly crossing
themselves with the joined three fingers, symbolical of the Trinity,
they doubtless murmured a prayer for the propitious completion of the
pilgrimage, to which, I am sure, we could have readily echoed the amen.

The Valamo was particularly distinguished, on this occasion, by a flag
at the fore, carrying the white Greek cross on a red field. This
proclaimed her mission as she passed along, and the bells of many a
little church pealed God-speed to her and her passengers. The latter, in
spite of the rain, thronged the deck, and continually repeated their
devotions to the shrines on either bank. On the right, the starry domes
of the Smolnoi, rising from the lap of a linden--grove, flashed upon us;
then, beyond the long front of the college of _demoiselles nobles_ and
the military storehouses, we hailed the silver hemispheres which canopy
the tomb and shrine of St. Alexander of the Neva. On the left, huge
brick factories pushed back the gleaming groves of birch, which flowed
around and between them, to dip their hanging boughs in the river; but
here and there peeped out the bright green cupolas of some little
church, none of which, I was glad to see, slipped out of the panorama
without its share of reverence.

For some miles we sailed between a double row of contiguous villages,--a
long suburb of the capital, which stretched on and on, until the slight
undulations of the shore showed that we had left behind us the dead
level of the Ingrian marshes. It is surprising what an interest one
takes in the slightest mole-hill, after living for a short time on a
plain. You are charmed with an elevation which enables you to look over
your neighbor's hedge. I once heard a clergyman, in his sermon, assert
that "the world was perfectly smooth before the fall of Adam, and the
present inequalities in its surface were the evidences of human sin." I
was a boy at the time, and I thought to myself, "How fortunate it is
that we are sinners!" Peter the Great, however, had no choice left him.
The piles he drove in these marshes were the surest foundation of his
empire.

The Neva, in its sudden and continual windings, in its clear, cold,
sweet water, and its fringing groves of birch, maple, and alder,
compensates, in a great measure, for the flatness of its shores. It has
not the slow magnificence of the Hudson or the rush of the Rhine, but
carries with it a sense of power, of steady, straightforward force, like
that of the ancient warriors who disdained all clothing except their
swords. Its naked river-god is not even crowned with reeds, but the full
flow of his urn rolls forth undiminished by summer and unchecked beneath
its wintry lid. Outlets of large lakes frequently exhibit this
characteristic, and the impression they make upon the mind does not
depend on the scenery through which they flow. Nevertheless, we
discovered many points the beauty of which was not blotted out by rain
and cloud, and would have shone freshly and winningly under the touch of
the sun. On the north bank there is a palace of Potemkin, (or
Potchomkin, as his name is pronounced in Russian,) charmingly placed at
a bend, whence it looks both up and down the river. The gay color of the
building, as of most of the _datchas_, or country-villas, in Russia,
makes a curious impression upon the stranger. Until he has learned to
accept it as a portion of the landscape, the effect is that of a scenic
design on the part of the builder. These dwellings, these villages and
churches, he thinks, are scarcely intended to be permanent: they were
erected as part of some great dramatic spectacle, which has been, or is
to be, enacted under the open sky. Contrasted with the sober,
matter-of-fact aspect of dwellings in other countries, they have the
effect of temporary decorations. But when one has entered within these
walls of green and blue and red arabesques, inspected their thickness,
viewed the ponderous porcelain stores, tasted, perhaps, the bountiful
cheer of the owner, he realizes their palpable comforts, and begins to
suspect that all the external adornment is merely an attempt to restore
to Nature that coloring of which she is stripped by the cold sky of the
North.

A little farther on, there is a summer villa of the Empress
Catharine,--a small, modest building, crowning a slope of green turf.
Beyond this, the banks are draped with foliage, and the thinly clad
birches, with their silver stems, shiver above the rush of the waters.
We, also, began to shiver under the steadily falling rain, and retreated
to the cabin on the steward's first hint of dinner. A _table d'hote_ of
four courses was promised us, including the preliminary _zakouski_ and
the supplementary coffee,--all for sixty _copeks_, which is about
forty-five cents. The _zakouski_ is an arrangement peculiar to Northern
countries, and readily adopted by foreigners. In Sweden it is called the
_smoergas_, or "butter-goose" but the American term (if we had the
custom) would be "the whetter." On a side-table there are various plates
of anchovies, cheese, chopped onions, raw salt herring, and bread, all
in diminutive slices, while glasses of corresponding size surround a
bottle of _kuemmel_, or cordial of caraway-seed. This, at least, was the
_zakouski_ on board the Valamo, and to which our valiant captain
addressed himself, after first bowing and crossing himself towards the
Byzantine Christ and Virgin in either corner of the cabin. We, of
course, followed his example, finding our appetites, if not improved,
certainly not at all injured thereby. The dinner which followed far
surpassed our expectations. The national _shchee_, or cabbage-soup, is
better than the sound of its name; the fish, fresh from the cold Neva,
is sure to be well cooked where it forms an important article of diet;
and the partridges were accompanied by those plump little Russian
cucumbers, which are so tender and flavorous that they deserve to be
called fruit rather than vegetables.

When we went on deck to light our Riga cigars, the boat was approaching
Schluesselburg, at the outlet of the lake. Here the Neva, just born,
sweeps in two broad arms around the island which bears the
Key-Fortress,--the key by which Peter opened this river-door to the Gulf
of Finland. The pretty town of the same name is on the south bank, and
in the centre of its front yawn the granite gates of the canal which,
for a hundred versts, skirts the southern shore of the lake, forming,
with the Volkhoff River and another canal beyond, a summer communication
with the vast regions watered by the Volga and its affluents. The Ladoga
Canal, by which the heavy barges laden with hemp from Mid-Russia, and
wool from the Ural, and wood from the Valdai Hills, avoid the sudden
storms of the lake, was also the work of Peter the Great. I should have
gone on shore to inspect the locks, but for the discouraging persistence
of the rain. Huddled against the smoke-stack, we could do nothing but
look on the draggled soldiers and _mujiks_ splashing through the mud,
the low yellow fortress, which has long outlived its importance, and the
dark-gray waste of lake which loomed in front, suggestive of rough water
and kindred abominations.

There it was, at last,--Lake Ladoga,--and now our prow turns to unknown
regions. We steamed past the fort, past a fleet of brigs, schooners, and
brigantines, with huge, rounded stems and sterns, laden with wood from
the Wolkonskoi forests, and boldly entered the gray void of fog and
rain. The surface of the lake was but slightly agitated, as the wind
gradually fell and a thick mist settled on the water. Hour after hour
passed away, as we rushed onward through the blank, and we naturally
turned to our fellow-passengers in search of some interest or diversion
to beguile the time. The heavy-bearded, peasants and their
weather-beaten wives were scattered around the deck in various
attitudes, some of the former asleep on their backs, with open mouths,
beside the smoke-stack. There were many picturesque figures among them,
and, if I possessed the quick pencil of Kaulbach, I might have filled a
dozen leaver of my sketch-book. The _bourgeoisie_ were huddled on the
quarter-deck benches, silent, and fearful of sea-sickness. But a very
bright, intelligent young officer turned up, who had crossed the Ural,
and was able to entertain us with an account of the splendid
sword-blades of Zlataoust. He was now on his way to the copper mines of
Pitkaranda, on the northeastern shore of the lake.

About nine o'clock in the evening, although still before sunset, the fog
began to darken, and I was apprehensive that we should have some
difficulty in finding the island of Konewitz, which was to be our
stopping-place for the night. The captain ordered the engine to be
slowed, and brought forward a brass half-pounder, about a foot long,
which was charged and fired. In less than a minute after the report, the
sound of a deep, solemn bell boomed in the mist, dead ahead. Instantly
every head was uncovered, and the rustle of whispered prayers fluttered
over the deck, as the pilgrims bowed and crossed themselves. Nothing was
to be seen; but, stroke after stroke, the hollow sounds, muffled and
blurred in the opaque atmosphere, were pealed out by the guiding bell.
Presently a chime of smaller bells joined in a rapid accompaniment,
growing louder and clearer as we advanced. The effect was startling.
After voyaging for hours over the blank water, this sudden and solemn
welcome, sounded from some invisible tower, assumed a mystic and
marvellous character. Was it not rather the bells of a city ages ago
submerged, and now sending its ghostly summons up to the pilgrims
passing over its crystal grave?

Finally a tall mast, its height immensely magnified by the fog, could be
distinguished; then the dark hulk of a steamer, a white gleam of sand
through the fog, indistinct outlines of trees, a fisherman's hut, and a
landing-place. The bells still rang out from some high station near at
hand, but unseen. We landed as soon as the steamer had made fast, and
followed the direction of the sound. A few paces from the beach stood a
little chapel, open, and with a lamp burning before its brown Virgin and
Child. Here our passengers stopped, and made a brief prayer before going
on. Two or three beggars, whose tattered dresses of tow suggested the
idea of their having clothed themselves with the sails of shipwrecked
vessels, bowed before us so profoundly and reverently that we at first
feared they had mistaken us for the shrines. Following an avenue of
trees, up a gentle eminence, the tall white towers and green domes of a
stately church gradually detached themselves from the mist, and we found
ourselves at the portal of the monastery. A group of monks, in the usual
black robes, and high, cylindrical caps of crape, the covering of which
overlapped and fell upon their shoulders, were waiting, apparently to
receive visitors. Recognizing us as foreigners, they greeted us with
great cordiality, and invited us to take up our quarters for the night
in the house appropriated to guests. We desired, however, to see the
church before the combined fog and twilight should make it too dark; so
a benevolent old monk led the way, hand in hand with P., across the
court-yard.

The churches of the Greek faith present a general resemblance in their
internal decorations. There is a glitter of gold, silver, and flaring
colors in the poorest. Statues are not permitted, but the pictures of
dark Saviours and Saints are generally covered with a drapery of silver,
with openings for the head and hands. Konewitz, however, boasts of a
special sanctity, in possessing the body of Saint Arsenius, the founder
of the monastery. His remains are inclosed in a large coffin of silver,
elaborately chased. It was surrounded, as we entered, by a crowd of
kneeling pilgrims; the tapers burned beside it, and at the various
altars; the air was thick with incense, and the great bell still boomed
from the misty tower. Behind us came a throng of our own
deck-passengers, who seemed to recognize the proper shrines by a sort of
devotional instinct, and were soon wholly absorbed in their prayers and
prostrations. It is very evident to me that the Russian race requires
the formulas of the Eastern Church; a fondness for symbolic ceremonies
and observances is far more natural to its character than to the nations
of Latin or Saxon blood. In Southern Europe the peasant will exchange
merry salutations while dipping his fingers in the holy water, or turn
in the midst of his devotions to inspect a stranger; but the Russian, at
such times, appears lost to the world. With his serious eyes fixed on
the shrine or picture, or, maybe, the spire of a distant church, his
face suddenly becomes rapt and solemn, and no lurking interest in
neighboring things interferes with its expression.

One of the monks, who spoke a little French, took us into his cell. He
was a tall, frail man of thirty-five, with a wasted face, and brown hair
flowing over his shoulders, like most of his brethren of the same age.
In those sharp, earnest features, one could see that the battle was not
yet over. The tendency to corpulence does not appear until after the
rebellious passions have been either subdued, or pacified by compromise.
The cell was small, but neat and cheerful, on the ground-floor, with a
window opening on the court, and a hard, narrow pallet against the wall.
There was also a little table, with books, sacred pictures, and a bunch
of lilacs in water. The walls were whitewashed, and the floor cleanly
swept. The chamber was austere, certainly, but in no wise repulsive.

It was now growing late, and only the faint edges of the twilight
glimmered overhead, through the fog. It was not night, but a sort of
eclipsed day, not much darker than our winter days under an overcast
sky. We returned to the tower, where an old monk took us in charge.
Beside the monastery is a special building for guests, a room in which
was offered to us. It was so clean and pleasant, and the three broad
sofa-couches with leather cushions looked so inviting, that we decided
to sleep there, in preference to the crowded cabin. Our supply of
shawls, moreover, enabled us to enjoy the luxury of undressing. Before
saying good-night, the old monk placed his hand upon R.'s head. "We have
matins at three o'clock," said he; "when you hear the bell, get up, and
come to the church: it will bring blessing to you." We were soon buried
in a slumber which lacked darkness to make it profound. At two o'clock,
the sky was so bright that I thought it six, and fell asleep again,
determined to make three hours before I stopped. But presently the big
bell began to swing: stroke after stroke, it first aroused, but was fast
lulling me, when the chimes struck in and sang all manner of incoherent
and undevout lines. The brain at last grew weary of this, when, close to
our door, a little, petulant, impatient bell commenced barking for dear
life. R. muttered and twisted in his sleep, and brushed away the sound
several times from his upper ear, while I covered mine,--but to no
purpose. The sharp, fretful jangle went through shawls and cushions, and
the fear of hearing it more distinctly prevented me from rising for
matins. Our youth, also, missed his promised blessing, and so we slept
until the sun was near five hours high,--that is, seven o'clock.

The captain promised to leave for Kexholm at eight, which left us only
an hour for a visit to the _Konkamen_, or Horse-Rock, distant a mile, in
the woods. P. engaged as guide a long-haired acolyte, who informed us
that he had formerly been a lithographer in St. Petersburg. We did not
ascertain the cause of his retirement from the world: his features were
too commonplace to suggest a romance. Through the mist, which still hung
heavy on the lake, we plunged into the fir-wood, and hurried on over its
uneven carpet of moss and dwarf whortleberries. Small gray boulders then
began to crop out, and gradually became so thick that the trees thrust
them aside as they grew. All at once the wood opened on a rye-field
belonging to the monks, and a short turn to the right brought us to a
huge rock, of irregular shape, about forty feet in diameter by twenty in
height. The crest overhung the base on all sides except one, up which a
wooden staircase led to a small square chapel perched upon the summit.

The legends attached to this rock are various, but the most authentic
seems to be, that in the ages when the Carelians were still heathen,
they were accustomed to place their cattle upon this island in summer,
as a protection against the wolves, first sacrificing a horse upon the
rock. Whether their deity was the Perun of the ancient Russians or the
Jumala of the Finns is not stated; the inhabitants at the present day
say, of course, the Devil. The name of the rock may also be translated
"Petrified Horse," and some have endeavored to make out a resemblance to
that animal, in its form. Our acolyte, for instance, insisted thereupon,
and argued very logically--"Why, if you omit the head and legs, you
must see that it is exactly like a horse." The peasants say that the
Devil had his residence in the stone, and point to a hole which he made,
on being forced by the exorcisms of Saint Arsenius to take his
departure. A reference to the legend is also indicated in the name of
the island, Konewitz,--which our friend, the officer, gave to me in
French as _Chevalise_, or, in literal English, _The Horsefied_.

The stones and bushes were dripping from the visitation of the mist, and
the mosquitoes were busy with my face and hands while I made a rapid
drawing of the place. The quick chimes of the monastery, through which
we fancied we could hear the warning boat-bell, suddenly pierced through
the forest, recalling us. The Valamo had her steam up, when we arrived,
and was only waiting for her rival, the Letuchie (Flyer), to get out of
our way. As we moved from the shore, a puff of wind blew away the fog,
and the stately white monastery, crowned with its bunch of green domes,
stood for a moment clear and bright in the morning sun. Our pilgrims
bent, bareheaded, in devotional farewell; the golden crosses sparkled an
answer, and, the fog rushed down again like a falling curtain.

We steered nearly due north, making for Kexholm, formerly a frontier
Swedish town, at the mouth of the River Wuoxen. For four hours it was a
tantalizing struggle between mist and sunshine,--a fair blue sky
overhead, and a dense cloud sticking to the surface of the lake. The
western shore, though near at hand, was not visible; but our captain,
with his usual skill, came within a quarter of a mile of the channel
leading to the landing-place. The fog seemed to consolidate into the
outline of trees; hard land was gradually formed, as we approached; and
as the two river-shores finally inclosed us, the air cleared, and long,
wooded hills arose in the distance. Before us lay a single wharf, with
three wooden buildings leaning against a hill of sand.

"But where is Kexholm?"

"A verst inland," says the captain; "and I will give you just half an
hour to see it."

There were a score of peasants, with clumsy two-wheeled carts and shaggy
ponies at the landing. Into one of these we clambered, gave the word of
command, and were whirled off at a gallop. There may have been some
elasticity in the horse, but there certainly was none in the cart. It
was a perfect conductor, and the shock with which it passed over stones
and leaped ruts was instantly communicated to the _os sacrum_, passing
thence along the vertebrae, to discharge itself in the teeth. Our driver
was a sunburnt Finn, who was bent upon performing his share of the
contract, in order that he might afterwards with a better face demand a
ruble. On receiving just the half, however, he put it into his pocket,
without a word of remonstrance.

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