CHAPTER IV.
RUSSIA AND THE FROZEN SEA.
NOW, Alice, bring your atlas, and I will show you on the map where Russia lies.’
Alice brought her book of maps, and soon found the maps of Europe and Asia; and grandmamma showed her where the large country lay, and pointed out to her that the greatest part of Russia was in Asia, and reached across the whole of northern Asia.
‘Oh, how big it is!’ cried Alice; ‘it is much bigger than all the other countries together. Look at little England, Beatrice,—this little island is England, where we live; does it not look tiny? And now look at big Russia. Look, all that yellow is Russia!’ and Alice put her finger on the line that divided Russia from all the other countries, and showed her little sister how large it was.
‘Do you see, Alice,’ said grandmamma, ‘how far Russia extends? Even that smaller part that is in Europe reaches up to the Arctic or Frozen Ocean, and down to the Black Sea on the south; do you see, Alice?’
‘Why is that sea called the Frozen Ocean?’
‘Because it is frozen for many months in the year, and the greater part of it is always frozen.’
‘Can the sea really freeze, grandmamma?’ asked both the little girls. ‘How can the waves freeze, and be made quiet?’
‘The sea that lies on the north of Russia freezes every winter, but our sea here does not freeze; it is too warm.’
‘But how can it freeze, grandmamma? I cannot understand how it can,’ said the little girl.
‘It is difficult to make it clear to you, Alice; but I will try and explain it. First, from the great cold, little pieces of ice are formed; these pieces float about, for ice is lighter than water, and are tossed up and down by the restless waves; and they grow in size, and become bigger and bigger, till some join and stick together, and go on getting larger, till by degrees they cover the surface of the water. These pieces or masses of ice are pushed towards the shore, and there the ice first begins to make a firm covering over the sea.
‘But the ice on the sea is never smooth or even, like the ice on a pond or on a river; it is rough, and large pieces are heaped together, and large cracks are often made in the ice by the wind and the waves moving it, which makes it dangerous to drive or even walk a long distance over the Frozen Sea.’
‘Can people drive over the sea? But if it is frozen hard, why is it dangerous?’
‘Yes, dear Alice, people can and do drive on the Frozen Sea, and I have driven short distances myself on it, and I have known many people cross this gulf,’ showing Alice the Gulf of Finland. ‘You know, dear, what a gulf is?’
‘Yes,’ said Alice; ‘it is an arm of the sea that runs into the land.’
‘The peasants, or poor country people, used to drive across this gulf, as soon as the ice was tolerably firm and safe. They drove in small sledges drawn by little horses, and took over corn and other things to sell to the inhabitants of rocky Finland, where very little corn grows. But the getting across the large crevices or cracks was both difficult and dangerous. The people for that purpose take long boards with them on their sledges, and laying them across these open places, they drag their sledges over, walking over the planks themselves, and making their horses swim through the water; but their horses have often been lost in these large cracks, for though the horses can always swim, they cannot always get out of them, as the ice at the edges is brittle, and breaks under their efforts to scramble up.
‘I remember how some men, belonging to one of our villages, were lost in a snow-storm out at sea, and their bodies were not found till the summer, on a small, uninhabited island where they had taken refuge during the storm, lying on their faces. I believe that they had first lost their horses.’
‘How did they die, poor men? Were they starved or frozen to death on that desert island?’
‘I believe that they were frozen to death, and had gone to sleep from the cold, and never awoke.’
‘How very sad!’ said both the little girls.
‘But did you like Russia, grandmamma,’ asked Alice; ‘so cold and horrible, with wolves and bears?’
‘The winter in Russia is very long, and where I lived it sometimes lasted half the year, and we saw no grass all that time.’
‘How did you like to live in Russia, then?’
‘I had kind friends there; but though I liked some people very much, I did not like the country or the climate. In truth, dear children, there is no country in the whole world like our dear England; no country where people love God and pray to God so much as in England; and no country where everybody tries to do so much good as in England.’
‘Now, Alice, look for the two great capital cities of Russia. The old capital is called Moscow, and the new one is called St. Petersburg.’
Alice looked carefully at her map, and when grandmamma had told her that St. Petersburg lies high up in the north and Moscow much lower to the east, Alice found both places.
‘Please show me, grandmamma, where you lived.’
‘Here,’ said grandmamma, ‘on the shores of the Gulf of Finland, where the sea freezes in winter.’
