Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 January 1893 — A Glimpse at Moscow. [ARTICLE]

A Glimpse at Moscow.

I find Moscow one of the most interesting cities I have ever visited, writes Frank G. Carpenter, in the Washington Star. It is built upon hill and hollow along the winding Moscow river and it is almost circular in shape. It is twentyfive miles around it, and the shortest street car line from one part of it to the other takes you a distance of nine miles. In the very center of it is the great fortress known as the Kremlin, which has a vast wall sixty feet high running around it and in which are the palace of the Czar, a half-dozen churches, the cathedral and the tall tower built by Ivan the Terrible. This tower is five stories high audits golden dome rests in the air three hundred feet above the ground. I climbed to its top this morning and took a look over the city. A vast ocean of green trees and green houses seemed to move up and down in billowy waves below me, and out of this sea rose the golden spires of hundreds of churches. There were thousands upon thousands of trees and the roofs of all the houses were painted green. I could see the vast dome of the Church of Our Saviour near the river, and the Moscow dragged its sluggish course like a black snake in the form of the letter S through the city below. Beyond the city I could see the smokestacks of the factories in the suburbs and just under me was the triangular walled space known as the Kremlin. This contains about 200 acres. It is paved with cobblestones, and its massive wall is entered by five gates. Each of these gates has a history, and one is known as the gate of the Redeemer, or the sacred gate. It has a famous picture of the Savior above it, and every one, from the czar to the peasant, takes off his hat before passing through it. Every inch of the land about this tower is historic and sacred. In that church there all of the czars of Russia have been crowned, and in the treasury to the left are the thrones of all the emperors of the past and the historic jewels and the choicest plate now owned by the Russian crown. There are $000,000,000 worth of gold and silver and precious stones in that treasury, and there are basins of gold there which are as big as a baby's bath tub, and two card tables of solid silver which are worth a king's ransom. There are in this tower two bells of solid silver and the bells of this tower of Ivan the Great are among the most wonderful in the world