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Suddenly a cannon shot was heard. We were obliged to make haste and get ready for a pleasure party on the Neva, a “Water Assembly.”

It is the custom here, on hearing the gun signal or seeing the flags hung out at different parts of the town, for all barges, yachts, wherries, boyers, to assemble at the fortress. A fine is imposed for non-appearance.

We set out at once in our boyer with ten oarsmen. Together with other boats we kept rowing for a long time up and down the Neva, always following the Admiral, daring neither to lag behind nor overtake, for fear of being fined. Fines are imposed here for everything.

There was music; a band of trumpets and cornets. The bastions of the fortress re-echoed the sounds of the music.

We were sad as the music was, and the cold, pale blue river with its flat banks, the pale blue sky, transparent as ice, the gleam of the golden pinnacle on the Church of St. Peter and Paul, (built of wood, but painted yellow to suggest marble,) the melancholy chiming of the striking clocks, all intensified our dejection, which was of quite a different nature from anything I had hitherto experienced, except in this city.