The Amber Sea

Between St. Petersburg, the Capital of Russia, and Stockholm, the Capital of Sweden, there lies one of the most remarkable inland water highways of the world. The Baltic Sea is but a remote branch of the Atlantic Ocean; it gets its name from the Latin word balteus, a belt, the two channels connecting it with the North Sea and the ocean being called the "Great Belt" and the "Little Belt." (Skager Rack and Cattegat.) It covers an area of 150,000 square miles, with an average depth of 100 fathoms; the shallowest of seas, and the least salty. It is called the "Mediterranean of the North," and, like its namesake, has scarcely a perceptible tide.

The most remarkable fact connected with the Baltic is, that it lies in an amber basin. The agitated waters cast large quantities of it upon the shores; amber has been annually collected here for three or four centuries. To geologists this is a very positive proof that where the waters of the Baltic now ebb and flow there was once a flourishing forest of amber pines, for amber is a fossil. The indurated resin of an extinct species of pine, pieces of the bark, the cone of the pine tree, and insects unknown to our day, are found embedded in its yellow depths.

Another phenomenon connected with the Baltic is the gradual sinking of its coast lines in the south and the elevation of them in the north of Sweden. This change of level averages three feet in a century.

When the Baltic reaches the latitude of Stockholm it separates into two long gulfs, north and east--the Gulf of Bothnia, 400 miles long, with an average width of 100 miles; the Gulf of Finland, 200 miles long and 60 in width. The water is much colder and fresher than the ocean, from the fact that 250 rivers flow into it; and for this reason, also, it becomes a frozen sea for five months of the year.