Kexholm, which was founded in 1295, has attained since then a population of several hundreds.  Grass grows between the cobble-stones of its broad streets, but the houses are altogether so bright, so clean, so substantially comfortable, and the geraniums and roses peeping out between snowy curtains in almost every window suggested such cozy interiors, that I found myself quite attracted towards the plain little town.  “Here,” said I to P., “is a nook which is really out of the world.  No need of a monastery, where you have such perfect seclusion, and the indispensable solace of natural society to make it endurable.”  Pleasant faces occasionally looked out, curiously, at the impetuous strangers:  had they known our nationality, I fancy the whole population would have run together.  Reaching the last house, nestled among twinkling birch-trees on a bend of the river beyond, we turned about, and made for the fortress,—­another conquest of the Great Peter.  Its low ramparts had a shabby, neglected look; an old drawbridge spanned the moat, and there was no sentinel to challenge us as we galloped across.  In and out again, and down the long, quiet street, and over the jolting level to the top of the sandhill,—­we had seen Kexholm in half an hour.

At the mouth of the river still lay the fog, waiting for us, now and then stretching a ghostly arm over the woods and then withdrawing it, like a spirit of the lake, longing and yet timid to embrace the land.  With the Wuoxen come down the waters of the Saima, that great, irregular lake, which, with its innumerable arms, extends for a hundred and fifty miles into the heart of Finland, clasping the forests and mountains of Savolax, where the altar-stones of Jumala still stand in the shade of sacred oaks, and the song of the Kalewala is sung by the descendants of Wainamoeinen.  I registered a vow to visit those Finnish solitudes, as we shot out upon the muffled lake, heading for the holy isles of Valaam.  This was the great point of interest in our cruise, the shrine of our pilgrim-passengers.  We had heard so little of these islands before leaving St. Petersburg, and so much since, that our curiosity was keenly excited; and thus, though too well seasoned by experience to worry unnecessarily, the continuance of the fog began to disgust us.  We shall creep along as yesterday, said we, and have nothing of Valaam but the sound of its bells.  The air was intensely raw; the sun had disappeared, and the bearded peasants again slept, with open mouths, on the deck.

Saints Sergius and Herrmann, however, were not indifferent either to them or to us.  About the middle of the afternoon we suddenly and unexpectedly sailed out of the fog, passing, in the distance of a ship’s length, in to a clear atmosphere, with a far, sharp horizon!  The nuisance of the lake lay behind us, a steep, opaque, white wall.  Before us, rising in bold cliffs from the water and dark with pines, were the islands of Valaam.  Off went hats and