Here we made our first acquaintance with those fascinating gentry, whom his Imperial Majesty deputes to watch that nothing treasonable or contraband finds entrance into his dominions. Our intercourse here was, however, brief, our passports merely being demanded, and permission granted us to go on shore while the steamer was detained. At Cronstadt and St. Petersburg we formed a more intimate if not more agreeable acquaintance with these functionaries. Setting out again we coasted eastward up the Gulf of Finland, passing the grim fortress of Sveaborg, with its eight hundred guns, and garrison of fifteen thousand men, and shot up the beautiful bay to Helsingfors, one of the great naval stations of Russia. Touching at Revel, on the opposite shore of the Gulf of Finland, we ran due east up the Gulf, encountering the great Russian summer fleet, which was performing its annual manœuvres, and on the morning after leaving Helsingfors came in sight of the shipping and fortifications of Cronstadt. As we crept slowly up the narrow and winding channel, by which alone the harbor can be reached, and passed successively the grim lines of batteries which command every portion of it, we were forced to confess that it formed a fitting outpost to a great military power. Cronstadt is not only the chief naval dépôt of Russia, but is properly the port of St. Petersburg, as the capital is inaccessible to vessels drawing more than eight or nine feet of water. Hence Cronstadt is included in the St. Petersburg customs-district, and vessels clear indifferently for either, and are subject to only a single customs-house examination. It forms the key to the capital, which would be entirely at the mercy of any fleet which should once pass its batteries. It has therefore been fortified so strongly as to be apparently impregnable to all the navies of the world. We came to anchor under the guns of the fortress; and were soon put under the charge of our amiable friends of the custom-house, who took complete possession of the deck, while the passengers and officers of the vessel were directed to repair to the cabin to give an account of themselves, their occupations, pursuits, and designs to these rude and filthy representatives of the Czar. It was well for us that we had been in a measure hardened to these annoyances by our previous Continental experiences. Police and custom-house functionaries are nowhere famous for civility, but the rudest and most unendurable specimens of that class whom it has ever been my fortune to encounter are the lower orders of the Russian officials. We could, however, congratulate ourselves that the infliction was light in comparison to what it would have been had we proceeded by land from Abo. There trunks, pockets, and pocket-books are liable to repeated searches at different stations along the route. We were told of travelers who had their boxes of tooth-powder carefully emptied,