The pleasantest peculiarities of the climate are the light summer nights, and the Aurora Borealis in winter. These, however, are only enjoyed by the solitary traveller, wandering through tlie illuminated summer forests, or by the Lettes and Esthonians singing through the short bright nights, or driving over the ice-covered lakes by the gleam of the Northern Light, to tlie weddings and festivities of their friends.
At certain seasons of the year, the whole surface of the country appears to be one vast marsh. Clear crystal brooks scarcely exist anywhere, and all the small rivers are marshy and dangerous. The aspect of a great Livonian marsh is dreary in the highest degree. Far and wide nothing is to be seen but a. barren, desolate chaos, overgrown by moss and rushes. Here and there rise a solitary pine or stunted birch, and occasionally a lonely flower in the distance. All is a bare, wild, gloomy desert, inhabited by snipes and woodcocks, enlivened only by the monotonous cry of the lapwing hovering over her nest, or by the notes of the quail hiding in the wet grass.
Wherever the ground has sunk, and water collected over it, lakes liave formed. They have little that is attractive in their a2:pearance, but they nourish a multitude of ducks, wild geese, and swans. They very frequently contain floating islands. Pieces of the marshy soil detacli themselves from the land, with all the trees, herbs, ^q., that may le gnnving upon them, and the wmd drives them backwards and forwaixls bctwceu
the opposite shores. The inhabitants fasten these islands now to one side, now to the other, according as they vnsh to graze their cattle.
Though the marshes, lakes, moors, and sandwastes render many parts useless for agriculture, yet the country is upon the whole fertile, and is particularly well adapted for rye, barley, and flax. The fertility decreases however the further northward we go ; Courland is most fruitful, Esthonia least so, and Livonia occupies a middle rank. Livonia, however, is distinguished by a greater perfection of agricultural skill than Courland.
Li spite of the immense consumption of wood which has been going on for centuries, in the ovens, distilleries, bathing-rooms, houses, and in the manm'ing of the Baltic provinces, the magnificence and extent of their pine and fir forests is unequalled.
Our foresters use a thousand precautions against what they consider injurious to forests. Mice, rabbits, squirrels, hares, stags, deer, heathcocks, and pigeons injure the trees, and are to be extirpated. Reeds, mosses, creepers, and rushes are not to be allowed because they deprive the trees of nourishment. The trees are to be protected against all wood-gnawing insects, against severe cold, which stops the growth of plants, and against extreme heat which injures their seeds. The trees are to be kept from hindering each other's growth by being too much crowded together, but are not to be too far apart^ because they may then suffer still more from snow, ice, and hoar-frost. Marshy spots are never to be tolerated.
Now let us consider the condition of the forests of Livonia and Courland. Wild pigeons and heathcocks abound unmolested in the branches. Hares, elks, stags, and other enemies to the young tender trees live and die by multitudes undisturbed. The creeping clinging parasites hang round every old decaying branch, and the vigorous young trees can hardly penetrate through the moss, reeds, and rushes. Severe as is the cold in winter, the heat is extreme in summer. The snow sometimes lies so thickly on every twig as to bend the old and young branches together to the ground beneath the weight. Thousands of young saplings are often rendered cripples for life, and hundreds of venerable old trees are blighted by a single night of hoar-frost. The soil is everywhere marshy, and the evaporation of the morasses creates an intense cold, which blights the growth of multitudes of young trees.