The whole trade of St. Petersburg with foreign countries employs a yearly capital of about three hundred millions. About seventy-five or eighty millions may be reckoned to the account of the " foreign guests'' (innostranniye gostui), and the rest (two hundred and twenty millions) to the natives, or subjects of the empire (Russian, German, French, Swedish, &c. &c.). There are several houses in St. Petersburg which turn yearly a capital of from ten to twenty millions, or about one-third of the whole trade of Riga. Commerce has increased amazingly in activity during this century, in spite of the oppressive burden of the customs. f
The most active agents between the Neva and foreign lands, during the first half of the last century, were the Dutch ; since that time the English. The first ship that entered the port of St. Petersburg was from Holland, the same on board of which Peter the Great studied navigation. It was received with extraordinary marks of honour, and had the privilege conferred on it of bringing whatever cargo it carried, duty free, into the empire. This privilege ceased at the end of the last century, as it was no longer possible to render the old ship sea-worthy. The first vessel that enters in May, like the swallow, announcing spring, after a seven months' winter, is still received with great tokens of joy, and is much favoured. In the first year of its existence, till 1720, St. Petersburg saw only from 12 to 50 ships yearly ; from 1720' to 1730, from 100 to 250; from 1730 to 1750, 300 to 400 on an average; and this century 2000. The Ukase of Peter the Great, forbidding importation for the interior through Arkhangel, and another commanding every merchant to ship a third of his merchandise for exportation from the Neva,
♦ There are about one hundred and fifty wholesale houses trading beyond sea in St. Tetersburg ; twenty or twenty-four Englisli, five French, one Spanish, and nearly one hundred German. " The EngUsh have the compactest, most soUd, and prettiest business," as a merchant once observed to me.
t At the close of tlie last century, from eight hundred to nine hundred vesseb entered the port of St. Petersburg yearly. At pr.'sent nearly two thousand is the number.
have not alone contributed to this rapid advance ; a glance at the geographical position of St. Petersburg will convince every one that it must sooner or later have obtained for itself all the advantages that these ukases were intended to confer on it.
The custom-house, at whose quay all vessels not drawing more than nine foot water can conveniently land their cargoes, is to the west of the Exchange, on the lesser Neva, and close to it are enormous magazines, crowded with every species of property. Directly behind the exchange is a large open space fenced with iron-railing, where, the whole year through, and exposed to all changes of the atmosphere, immense quantities of merchandise, even of a kind very liable to injury, such as sugar, are kept in the open air. Throughout all Russia, even in Riga, in the midst of the market-places, we find such rough deposits of wares. The custom probably obtained from the coarse nature of the cliief articles of Russian exportation, timber, hides, tallow, leather, &c., for which a mat or a tarred cloth was always a sufficient protection. Here is often to be seen in one yard, under such tarpawHngs, and kept from the bare earth merely by planks, — copper, lead, iron, sugar, wine, &c., for months together, exposed to snow, rain, and sunshine ; lead enough to kill all the crows in the world, if a three-pounder were wanted for every one of them ; sugar enough to sweeten the lake of Ladoga ; spice and incense to embalm the whole empire ; and the choicest woods of Brazil and the West Indies.