Embarking at Stockholm for St. Petersburg one crosses the Baltic,--that Mediterranean of the North, but which is in reality a remote branch of the Atlantic Ocean, with which it is connected by two gulfs, the Cattegat and the Skager-Rack. It reaches from the south of the Danish archipelago up to the latitude of Stockholm, where it extends a right and left arm, each of great size, the former being the Gulf of Finland, and the latter the Gulf of Bothnia, the whole forming the most remarkable basin of navigable inland water in the world. The Finnish Gulf is two hundred miles long by an average width of sixty miles, and that of Bothnia is four hundred miles long averaging a hundred in width. The peninsula of Denmark, known under the name of Jutland, stands like a barrier between the Baltic and the North Sea, midway between the two extremes of the general western configuration of the continent of Europe. We have called the Baltic the Mediterranean of the North, but it has no such depth as that classic inland sea, which finds its bed in a cleft of marvellous depression between Europe and Africa. One thousand fathoms of sounding-line off Gibraltar will not reach the bottom, and two thousand fathoms fail to find it a few miles east of Malta. The maximum depth of the Baltic on the contrary is found to be only a hundred and fifty fathoms, while its average depth is considerably less than a hundred fathoms. It cannot be said that these waters deserve the expressive epithet which has been applied to the sea that laves the coast of Italy and the Grecian Isles; namely, "The cradle of the human race," but yet the ages ancient and modern have not been without their full share of startling episodes in these more northern regions.
It is a curious though familiar fact that the waters of the Baltic, or rather the bottom of the basin in which it lies, is rich in amber, which the agitated waters cast upon the shores in large quantities annually,--a process which has been going on here for three or four centuries at least. We all know that amber is an indurated fossil resin produced by an extinct species of pine; so that it is evident that where these waters ebb and flow there were once flourishing forests of amber pines. These were doubtless submerged by the gradual encroachment of the sea, or suddenly engulfed by some grand volcanic action of Nature. Pieces of the bark and the cones of the pine-tree are often found adhering to the amber, and insects of a kind unknown to our day are also found embedded in its yellow depths. The largest piece of amber extant is in the Berlin Museum, and is about the size of a child's head. This is dark and lacks transparency, a quality which is particularly sought for by those who trade in the article. It is known that the peninsula of Scandinavia is gradually becoming elevated above the surrounding waters at the north, and depressed in an equal ratio in the extreme south,--a fact which is held to be of great interest among geologists. The total change in the level has been carefully observed and recorded by scientific commissions, and the aggregate certified to is a trifle over three feet occurring in a period of a hundred and eighteen years.