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, by writing absurd names, the guards were instructed to make an example of the next jester whose name should strike them as suspicious. Fate willed that the imperial comptroller, Baltazar Baltazarovitch Kampenhausen, with his Russianized German name, should fall a victim to this order, and he was detained until his fantastic cognomen, so harsh to Slavic ears, could be investigated.
By day or by night, in winter or summer, it is a pure delight to stand on the Anitchkoff Bridge and survey the scene on either hand. If we gaze to the north toward what is one of the oldest parts settled on the rivulet-riddled so-called "mainland," in this Northern Venice, we see the long, plain façade of the Katherine Institute for the education of the daughters of officers, originally built by Peter the Great for his daughter Anna, as the "Italian Palace," but used only for the palace servants, until it was built over and converted to its present purpose. Beyond, we catch a glimpse of the yellow wings of Count Scheremetieff's ancient house and its great iron railing, behind which, in a spacious courtyard, after the Moscow fashion so rare in thrifty Petersburg, the main building lies invisible to us. If we look to the south, we find the long ochre mass of the Anitchkoff Palace, facing on the Nevsky, upon the right shore; on the left, beyond the palace of Sergiei Alexandrovitch, the branch of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, in old Russian style, with highly colored saints and heads of seraphim on the outer walls; and a perspective of light, stuccoed building,-dwellings, markets, churches,-until the eye halts with pleasure on the distant blue dome of the Troitzky cathedral, studded with golden stars. Indeed, it is difficult to discover a vista in St. Petersburg which does not charm us with a glimpse of one or more of these cross-crowned domes, floating, bubble-like, in the pale azure of the sky. Though they are far from being as beautiful in form or coloring as those of Moscow, they satisfy us at the moment.
If it is on a winter night that we take up our stand here, we may catch a distant glimpse of the numerous "skating-gardens," laid out upon the ice cleared on the snowy surface of the canal. The ice-hills will be black with forms flitting swiftly down the shining roads on sledges or skates, illuminated by the electric light; a band will be braying blithely, regardless of the piercing cold, and the skaters will dance on, in their fancy-dress ball or prize races, or otherwise, clad so thinly as to amaze the shivering foreigner as he hugs his furs.
By day the teamsters stand upon the quay, with rough aprons over their ballet-skirted sheepskin coats, waiting for a job. If we hire one of them, we shall find that they all belong to the ancient Russian Artel, or Labor Union, which prevents competition beyond a certain point. When the price has been fixed, after due and inevitable chaffering, one lomovoi grasps his shapeless cap by its worn edge of fur, bites a kopek, and drops it in. Each of the other men contributes a marked copper likewise, and we are invited to draw lots, in full view, to determine which of them shall have the job. The master of the Artel sees to it that there is fair play on both sides. If an unruly member presumes to intervene with a lower bid, with the object of monopolizing the job out of turn, he is promptly squelched, and, though his bid may be allowed to stand, the man whose kopek we have drawn must do the work. The winner chee-ee-eeps to his little horse, whose shaggy mane has been tangled by the loving hand of the domovoi (house-sprite) and hangs to his knees. The patient beast, which, like all Russian horses, is never covered, no matter how severe the weather may be, or how hot he may be from exercise, rouses himself from his real or simulated slumber, and takes up the burden of life again, handicapped by the huge wooden arch, gayly painted in flowers and initials, which joins his shafts, and does stout service despite his sorry aspect.
But the early summer is the season when the Fontanka is to be seen in its most characteristic state. The brilliant blue water sparkles under the hot sun, or adds one more tint to the exquisite hues which make of the sky one vast, gleaming fire-opal on those marvelous "white nights" when darkness never descends to a depth beyond the point where it leaves all objects with natural forms and colors, and only spiritualizes them with the gentle vagueness of a translucent veil. Small steamers, manned by wooden-faced, blond Finns, connect the unfashionable suburban quarters, lying near the canal's entrance into the Neva on the west, with the fashionable Court quarter on the northern quays at its other entrance into the Neva, seven versts away. They dart about like sea-gulls, picking their path, not unfraught with serious danger, among the obstructions. The obstructions are many: washing-house boats (it is a good old unexploded theory in Petersburg that clothes are clean only when rinsed in running water, even though our eyes and noses inform us, unaided by chart, where the drainage goes); little flotillas of dingy flat-boats, anchored around the "Fish-Gardens," and containing the latter's stock in trade, where persons of taste pick their second dinner-course out of the flopping inmates of a temporary scoop-net; huge, unwieldy, wood barks, put together with wooden pegs, and steered with long, clumsy rudders, which the poor peasants have painfully poled-tramp, tramp, tramp, along the sides-through four hundred miles of tortuous waterways from that province of the former haughty republic, "Lord Novgorod the Great," where Prince Rurik ruled and laid the foundations of the present imperial empire, and whence came Prince-Saint Alexander, to win his surname of Nevsky, as we have seen, at the spot where his monastery stands, a couple of miles, at most, away.
The boatmen, who have trundled all day long their quaint little barrows over the narrow iron rails into the spacious inner courtyards of the houses on the quay, and have piled up their wood for winter fuel, or loaded it into the carts for less accessible buildings, now sit on the stern of their barks, over their coarse food,-sour black bread, boiled buckwheat groats, and salted cucumbers,-doffing their hats and crossing themselves reverently before and after their simple meal, and chatting until the red glow of sunset in the north flickers up to the zenith in waves of sea-green, lilac, and amber, and descends again in the north, at the pearl pink of dawn. Sleep is a lost art with these men, as with all classes of people, during those nerve-destroying "white nights." When all the silvery satin of the birch logs has been removed from their capacious holds, these primitive barks will be unpegged, and the cheap "bark-wood," riddled with holes as by a mitrailleuse, will be used for poor structures on the outskirts of the town.