IIO

THE RUSSIAN FLEET

prahms and bomb-vessels. All the Tsar’s galleys,as yet built on the Baltic, are of hr; occasioned bythe difficulty of bringing oak timber to St. Peters-burg ; but within these two last years since the Tsarresolved on the Caspian expedition, oak timber hasbeen felled, and moulded, in the place abovementioned, for ioo galleys, and for carriages of 200large cannon. Experience confirms that his besthr built ships will not last above seven years; andeven some of oak timber want rebuilding at theexpiration of eight. Peradventure this date mightbe something extended, if, in felling, due regardwas had to the season of the year and age of thetrees. But having hitherto been extremely profuse,they are not compelled to range at a great distancein quest of proper trees ; and have generally inwinter ten or twelve thousand Tartar inhabitants,with three or four thousand horses, employed indrawing the timber out of the woods to the bank ofthe Volga. This river in its course, rolling throughvast tracts of land covered all winter with perpetualsnows, that dissolve in the spring and cause an in-undation overflowing great part of the country, en-riching the soil, and furnishing the inhabitants witha fine opportunity of bringing, by water, to their owndoors, all necessaries for the ensuing year, yet, there-by, necessitates the Tsar’s people to lay up theirtimber in prodigious piles, to prevent its being carriedaway, at the ascent, and by the force of the torrent;and, being thus exposed to wet and dry, much ofwhat has cost the Tsar some money and many menand horses their lives, becomes rotten before it isput aboard the strotids, x flat vessels for transporta-

1 Charnock spells this word ‘ stroeg.’ Speaking of the insur-rection in Russia (1666-1671) of Stenka Razin, he says : c . . . thenavy of the insurgents was composed of stroegs, or barks, besidesother vessels, &c.’ (Hist. Marine Architecture , vol. ii. p. 356).