In no part of the Baltic provinces is the German Protestant character of civilization so distinctly stamped as in lower Kourland. Large cities are few, but small market-towns and homesteads are comparatively numerous. The busiest towns of Kourland are Libau and Wendau on the coast, but Mitau is the capital.

Our best way thither would have been to branch from the main line at Koshedary toward Libau, turning off at Mojeiki1 to Mitau. We could thence have continued toward Riga, whither, however, we had determined to proceed by Dünaburg, where we arrived at the uncomfortable hour of four in the morning. Nor did a change of carriages involve merely a walk across the platform, inasmuch as the station for Riga was a mile distant, near the town, and was served by a local train. We were taken, however, under the wing of a fellow-traveller whose acquaintance we had made—M. de Rudnitsky, a director of the Dünaburg-Riga Railway—who kindly invited us to share his special carriage, thanks to which we had not only ample accommodation, but the company of a gentleman who gave us abundance of information by the way.

From Dünaburg to Riga is about 140 miles, the route lying along the valley of the Dvina. This river drains an area as large as Scotland, and receives an annual rainfall of twenty inches, thereby giving the river a discharge of about 18,000 cubic feet per second, or a little more than half as much as the Thames at London Bridge, the width, however, of the Thames in London being about the same as of the Dvina at Riga.

Not long after leaving the station is passed the strong fortress of Dünaburg, one of the second line of fortifications which protect the western frontier of Russia. It was built in 1825, on a spot where had been a stronghold so far back as 1582. It commands the passage of the river, and is intended to oppose an enemy on the main lines between St. Petersburg and Warsaw, Riga and Vitebsk.

About sixty miles from Dünaburg we entered the province of Livonia2 or Livland, which in early days gave its name to Kourland and Esthonia also. The province, including its islands, is rather larger than Switzerland, and has a more hilly surface than Kourland. There are several plateaus, some with an average height of 700 feet. Livonia has more than a thousand lakes, and two-fifths of its surface are covered by pine forests, some of them 200 miles in diameter. The country is covered everywhere with a glacial stratum, in some parts 400 feet thick, but there are no traces of marine deposits higher than 150 feet.

The appearance, consequently, of Livonia, though having many similarities, differs from Kourland in reminding the traveller that he is farther north. The gloomy pine forests tell unmistakably that the thinly scattered inhabitants have a less favorable field to cultivate than their Kourland brethren: The peasant farms are not so substantial in appearance, and thatched roofs abound. About fifty miles north of Riga, however, are the rich flax lands of Livonia. Here the forests are thinned and transformed into fields. Stone buildings with red-tiled roofs predominate, and the comfortable appearance of the peasantry leads one to suppose that they have become proprietors instead of tenants. Taking the country as a whole, however, only fifteen per cent, of the estates belong to the peasants; the remainder of the soil appertains to the nobles, the average holdings of the landed proprietors being from 9500 to 11,000 acres, which is far above the average of the estates in Russia.

We reached Riga about noon on Friday, and took rooms at the Hôtel de Rome3 The city proper lies on the northern bank of the Dvina, but is no longer encompassed with walls. The lines of fortification were removed in 1858. Since that date the town, now the fifth in population in the empire, has been greatly enlarged, and there is, outside the old city, the St. Petersburg suburb4 on the west, the Moscow suburb on the east, and on the other side of the river the Mitau suburb.5

On the Mitau bank, where the houses are chiefly of wood, one sees Jews, Poles, and Kourlaud and Lithuanian peasants landing masses of flax, linseed, and grain, whilst the Moscow suburb is inhabited chiefly by Russians, as witnessed to by their tea stalls and samovars in the street. 299 Many of them are dissenters of the “Old Believer” sect, whose ancestors fled here to take shelter under Protestant protection. These Russians gain a scanty subsistence as small dealers, harbor-men, and carpenters.

(Continued...)

1This appears to be a Latvian place name, alternately Muravieva. However, in researching a map of the Russian railway system we determined this refers to Mosheiki or more properly "Mažeikiai" in north-west Lithuania.
2While "Livonia" is generally taken to include present-day Latvia and Estonia, its Latvian portion more properly consisted of Latvia's Vidzeme and Latgale territories.
3The hotel was destroyed in WWII.
4Formerly the Petersburg suburb, then Proletarian suburb during the Soviet era, now Vidzeme suburb.
5Formerly the Jelgava suburb, now Zemgale suburb.
"Baltic Russia" in the public domain. Our digitization from an original printing and annotation for scholarly reference qualifies as part of a protected collection and a protected derivative work under Latvian Copyright Law § 5. ¶ 1. © 2024.
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