Robert Ker Porter (1777-1842). Travelling sketches in Russia and Sweden, during the years 1805, 1806, 1807, 1808. London: printed for R. Phillips, 1809. 2 vols. D1213, v.1

Robert Ker Porter (1777-1842). Travelling sketches in Russia and Sweden, during the years 1805, 1806, 1807, 1808. London: printed for R. Phillips, 1809. 2 vols. D1213, v.1

Postal in Petersburg; or, Hail-Mail. There's enough sleet, snow, and dark-of-night in St. P. in the winter to earn any postal worker an honest wage. Add to that a trek of eleven time zones. Trans-Siberian rail-mail speeds things up considerably. The difficulties of distribution of anything in as large an area as Russia in the 18th and 19th (and even the 20th and 21st) centuries has to have been overwhelming, even on a sunny day. It is said that in the old days a one-hour delay could be punishable by death, especially if military communication depended on it, and there was a need to keep those nosy western foreign dignitaries traveling in mail-coaches from having the chance to see more than they ought to, frosted windows or not. The postal system or iam, did become very speedy, but at a cost. The St. P. to Moscow route employed 13,000 iamshchiki in the 1760s. By 1843 there were 7,700 miles of gravel road, 1/3rd of those of Britain and 1/20th of what France had. Russian Butch Cassidys waylaid coaches, killed horses and pillaged goods so that thousands of horses were required yearly to keep any route going. But the route from Moscow to St. Petersburg was shortened from five weeks to one over the course of the 18th century. Robert Ker Porter was one of the brothers of English novelist Jane Porter. Invited by the Tsar to Russia in 1804, he married a Russian princess and after a stint in Venezuela as British consul returned to Russia where he died in St. Petersburg. The Department of Special Collections has a large collection of the Porter family papers.

D1213 vol. 1