THE DVINA.
By the Maimax arm we steam through the delta for some twenty miles;
past low, green banks and isles like those in the Missouri bed; though
the loam in the Dvina is not so rich and black as that on the American
stream. Yet these small isles are bright with grass and scrub. Beyond
them, on the main-land, lies a fringe of pines, going back into space
as far as the eye can pierce.
The low island lying on your right as you scrape the bar is called St.
Nicolas, after that sturdy priest, who is said to have smitten the
heretic Arius on his cheek. No one knows where this Nicolas lived and
died; for it is clear from the Acta, that he had no part in the
Council of Nice. The Book of Saints describes him as born in Liki and
living in Mira; whence they call him the Saint of Mirliki; but not a
line of his writing is extant, and the virtues assigned to him are of
opposing kinds. He is a patron of nobles and of children, of sailors,
of cadgers, and of pilgrims. Yet, in spite of his doubtful birth and
genius, Nicolas is a popular saint. Poor people like him as one who is
good to the poor; a friend of beggars, fishermen and tramps. A Russian
turns to him as the hope of starving and drowning men; so that his
name is often heard, his image often seen, in these northern wilds;
more than all else, on the banks of rivers and on the margins of the
Frozen Sea. A peasant learns with delight from his Book of Saints (his
Bible, Epos, Drama, Code, and History all in one) that Nicolas is the
most potent saint in heaven; sitting on the right hand of God; and
having a cohort of three hundred angels, armed and ready to obey his
nod. A mujik asked a foreign friend to tell him who will be God when
God dies? "My good fellow," said he, smiling, "God will never die." At
first the peasant seemed perplexed. "Never die!" and then a light fell
on him. "Yes," he retorted, slowly; "I see it now. You are an
unbeliever; you have no religion. Look you; I have been better taught.
God will one day die; for He is very old; and then St. Nicolas will
get his place."
Though he is common to all Russians--adored on the Dnieper, on the
Volkhof, on the Moskva, no less than on the Dvina--he is worshipped
with peculiar zeal in these northern zones. Here he is the sailor's
saint, the adventurer's help; and all the paintings of him show that
his watchful eyes are bent in eager tenderness upon the swirl and
passion of the Frozen Sea. This delta might be called his province;
for not only was the island on your right called after him, but also
the ancient channel, and the bay itself. The oldest cloister in the
district bears his name.
On passing into the Maimax arm, your eyes--long dimmed by the sight of
sombre rock, dark cloud, and sullen surf--are charmed by soft, green
grass and scrub; but the sight goes vainly out, through reeds and
copse, in search of some cheery note of house and farm. One log hut
you pass, and only one. Two men are standing near a bank, in a little
clearing of the wood; a lad is idling in a frail canoe, which the wash
of your steamer lifts and laves; but no one lodges in the shed; the
men and boy have come from a village some miles away. Dropping down
the river in their boat to cut down grass for their cows, and gather
up fuel for their winter fires, they will jump into their canoe at
vespers, and hie them home.
On the banks of older channels the villages are thick; slight groups
of sheds and churches, with a cloister here and there, and a scatter
of windmills whirling against the sky; each village and mill in its
appointed place, without the freak and medley of original thought.
Here nothing is done by individual force; a pope, an elder, an
imperial officer, must have his say in every case; and not a mouse can
stir in a Russian town, except by leave of some article in a printed
code. Fort Dvina was erected on a certain neck of land in the ancient
river-bed, and nature was expected to conform herself forever to the
order fixed by imperial rule.
On all these banks you note a forest of memorial crosses. When a
sailor meets with bad weather, he goes on shore and sets up a cross.
At the foot of this symbol he kneels in prayer, and when a fair wind
rises, he leaves his offering on the lonely coast. When the peril is
sharp, the whole ship's crew will land, cut down and carve tall trees,
and set up a memorial with names and dates. All round the margins of
the Frozen Sea these pious witnesses abound; and they are most of all
numerous on the rocks and banks of the Holy Isles. Each cross erected
is the record of a storm.
Some of these memorial crosses are historic marks. One tree, set up by
Peter the Great when he escaped from the wreck of his ship in the
frozen deep, has been taken from the spot where he planted it, and
placed in the cathedral at Archangel. "This cross was made by Captain
Peter," says a tablet cut in the log by the Emperor's own knife; and
Peter being a carver in wood and stone, the work is not without
touches of art and grace. Might not a word be urged in favor of this
custom of the sea, which leaves a picture and a blessing on every
shore? An English mariner is apt to quit a coast on which he has been
kept a prisoner by adverse winds with a curse in his heart and a bad
name on his tongue. Jack is a very grand fellow in his way; but surely
there is a beauty, not less winning than the piety, in this habit of
the Russian tar.
Climbing up the river, you come upon fleets of rafts and praams, on
which you may observe some part of the native life. The rafts are
floats of timber--pine logs, lashed together with twigs of willow,
capped with a tent of planks, in which the owner sleeps, while his
woodmen lie about in the open air when they are not paddling the raft
and guiding it down the stream. These rafts come down the Dvina and
its feeders for a thousand miles. Cut in the great forests of Vologda
and Nijni Konets, the pines are dragged to the waterside, and knitted
by rude hands into these broad, floating masses. At the towns some
sturdy helpers may be hired for nothing; many of the poor peasants
being anxious to get down the river on their way to the shrines of
Solovetsk. For a passage on the raft these pilgrims take a turn at the
oar, and help the owners to guide her through the shoals.
In the praams the life is a little less bleak and rough than it is on
board the rafts. In form the praam is like the toy called a Noah's
ark; a huge hull of coarse pine logs, riveted and clamped with iron,
covered by a peaked plank roof. A big one will cost from six to seven
hundred rubles (the ruble may be reckoned for the moment as half a
crown), and will carry from six to eight hundred tons of oats and rye.
A small section of the praam is boarded off to be used as a room. Some
bits of pine are shaped into a stool, a table, and a shelf. From the
roof-beam swings an iron pot, in which the boatmen cook their food
while they are out in the open stream; at other times--that is to say,
when they are lying in port--no fire is allowed on board, not even a
pipe is lighted, and the watermen's victuals must be cooked on shore.
Four or five logs lashed together serve them for a launch, by means of
which they can easily paddle to the bank.
Like the rafts, these praams take on board a great many pilgrims from
the upper country; giving them a free passage down, with a supply of
tea and black bread as rations, in return for their labor at the
paddle and the oar. Not much labor is required, for the praam floats
down with the stream. Arrived at Archangel, she empties her cargo of
oats into the foreign ships (most of them bound for the Forth, the
Tyne, and the Thames), and then she is moored to the bank, cut up, and
sold. Some of her logs may be used again for building sheds, the rest
is of little use, except for the kitchen and the stove.
The new port of Archangel, called Solambola, is a scattered handful of
log houses, that would remind you of a Swiss hamlet were it not for
the cluster of green cupolas and spires, reminding you still more
strongly of a Bulgarian town. Each belfry bears a crescent, crowned by
a cross. Along the brink of the river runs a strand, some six or eight
feet above the level plain; beyond this strand the fields fall off, so
that the country might be laid under water, while the actual strand
stood high and dry. The new port is a water-village; for in the
spring-time, when the ice is melting up stream, the flood goes over
all, and people have to pass from house to magazine in boats.
Not a grain of this strand in front of the sheds is Russ; the whole
line of road being built of ballast brought into the Dvina by foreign
ships, and chiefly from English ports. This ridge of pebble, marl, and
shells comes nearly all from London, Liverpool, and Leith; the Russian
trade with England having this peculiarity, that it is wholly an
export trade. A Russian sends us every thing he has for sale; his
oats, his flax, his deals, his mats, his furs, his tar; he buys either
nothing, or next to nothing, in return. A little salt and wine, a few
saw-mills--chiefly for foreign account--are what come back from
England by way of barter with the North. The payment is gold, the
cargo ballast; and the balance of account between the two countries
is--a strand of English marl and shells.