in this particular, take along your own sheets, pillow-cases, and
blankets. I intend going, and depend upon your company. Make up your
mind by ten o'clock, when I will call for your decision.

"Yours,

"P."

I laid down the note, looked at my watch, and found that I had an hour
for deliberation before P.'s arrival. "Lake Ladoga?" said I to myself;
"it is the largest lake in Europe,--I learned that at school. It is full
of fish; it is stormy; and the Neva is its outlet. What else?" I took
down a geographical dictionary, and obtained the following additional
particulars: The name _Lad'oga_ (not _Lado'ga,_ as it is pronounced in
America) is Finnish, and means "new." The lake lies between 60° and 61°
45' north latitude, is 175 versts--about 117 miles--in length, from
north to south, and 100 versts in breadth; receives the great river
Volkhoff on the south, the Svir, which pours into it the waters of Lake
Onega, on the east, and the overflow of nearly half the lakes of
Finland, on the west; and is, in some parts, fourteen hundred feet deep.

Vainly, however, did I ransack my memory for the narrative of any
traveller who had beheld and described this lake. The red hand-book,
beloved of tourists, did not even deign to notice its existence. The
more I meditated on the subject, the more I became convinced that here
was an untrodden corner of the world, lying within easy reach of a great
capital, yet unknown to the eyes of conventional sight-seers. The name
of Valaam suggested that of Barlaam, in Thessaly, likewise a Greek
monastery; and though I had never heard of Sergius and Herrmann, the
fact of their choosing such a spot was the beginning of a curious