The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

358 RUSSIA Ds EUROPE.unimportant place till the end of tlie sixteenth century, when the English tradersmade the "White Sea the commercial route between Eussia and the "West. Itsmost flourishing period preceded the foundation of St. Petersburg, which offered amore convenient highway of communication with the rest of Europe. Andalthough he here founded an arsenal, a castle, and a dockyard, Peter the Greatcontributed none the less to the decadence of the place by restricting the amountof its imports, by suppressing its export trade in hemp, flax, tallow, and overone-third of the other products of the empire, and by summoning its sailors andtraders to his new capital. Nevertheless its position at the only river outlet of avast basin, with a rapidly increasing population, could not fail to restore a certainactivity to " the fourth capital of the empire." In spite of the ice, suspending allnavigation for nearly seven months, Archangel exports, especially to England,Holland, and Norway, flax, hemp, oats, and other cereals, timber, resin, train oil,and tallow, its exports being usually tenfold its imports, which consist mainly infish from Norway, wines, and colonial produce.The women are here formed intounions for loading the vessels with corn, the akkipidorka, or manageress, beinggenerally chosen from amongst those familiar with the Anglo-Russian jargon ofthe place. The town presents a very animated appearance during the annual fair,when some 50,000 people crowd into Archangel and its northern suburb ofSolombala, seat of the Admiralty. But the resident population seems to havebeen falling off during the last fifty years, the census of 1860 having returned33,675, and that of 1872 not quite 20,000 ; this last, however, was taken in winter.A colony of English artisans is settled in the neighbourhood in connection withsome large saw-mills.Mezen, although the outlet of the Mezen basin, is a mere village, lying almostbeyond the limits of vegetation, and deprived of much of its trade by Russanova,situated 12 miles nearer to the mouth of the Mezen estuary.It is a dismal placeof banishment, one of those " Siberias this side the Urals " where the dominantChurch kindled the first fires of persecution against the Raskolniks in the seventeenthcentury. In this and other respects it resembles Pustozersk, the modestcommercial centre of the Petchora basin. The natives, no less than the exiles, inthese arctic stations are often decimated by nervous disorders attributed to the"evil eye," but caused probably by privations of all sorts. Memorial crosses,greatly revered by the people of Mezen, still recall a terrible winter in the firsthalf of the eighteenth century, during which the whole population all but perishedof cold and exposure.Novaya Zemlya.Novata Zemlya—that is, " New Land " — forms the eastern limit of the watersstretching along the northern shores of Lapland, and sometimes known as"Barents' Sea," in honour of the illustrious navigator who crossed it towards theend of the sixteenth century. With the island of Waigatch it may be regardedsimply as a northern continuation of the Russian mainland. But though long