LADOGA, formerly Nevo, a lake of northern Russia, situated between 59° 56' and 61° 46' N. lat., and 29° 53' and 32° 50' E. long., surrounded by the governments of St Petersburg, Olonetz, and Wiborg. It has the form of a quadrilateral, elongated from north-west to south-east. Its eastern and southern shores are flat and marshy, whilst the north-western margin is craggy and fringed by numerous small rocky islands, the largest of which are Valaam and Konevetz, and which occupy altogether an area of 223 square miles. Lake Ladoga is 7000 square miles in area, that is, thirty-one times as large as the Lake of Geneva; but, its depth being less, it contains only nineteen times as much water as the great lake of Switzerland. The greatest depth, 244 yards, is in a cavity situated in the north-western part of the lake, the average depth not exceeding 100 yards. The level of Lake Ladoga is 55 feet above the Gulf of Finland, but it rises and falls about 7 feet according to atmospherical conditions. The western and eastern shores consist of boulder clay, as well as a narrow strip on the southern shore, south of which runs a ridge of crags of Silurian sandstones; the hills of the northwestern shore afford a variety of granites and crystalline slates of the Laurentian system, whilst the Valaam island is made up of a rock which Russian geologists describe as orthoclastic hypersthenite. The granite and marble of Serdobol, and the sandstone of Poutilovo, are much used for buildings at St Petersburg; copper and tin from the Pitkaranda mine are exported. No less than sixty rivers enter Lake Ladoga, pouring into it the waters of numberless smaller lakes which lie at higher levels around it. The Volkhov, which conveys the waters of Lake Ilmen, is the largest; Lake Onega discharges its ...waters by the Svir; and the Saima system of lakes of eastern Finland contributes the Wuoxen and Taipala rivers; the Syass brings the waters from the smaller lakes and marshes of the Valdai plateau. Lake Ladoga discharges its surplus water by means of the Neva, which flows from its southwestern corner into the Gulf of Finland, rolling down its broad channel 104,000 cubic feet of water per second. The water of Lake Ladoga is very pure and cold; in May its temperature on the surface does not exceed 36° Fahr., and even in August it reaches only 50° and 53°, the average yearly temperature of the air at Valaam being 36° - 8. The lake begins to freeze in October, but it is only about the end of December that it is frozen in its deeper parts; and it remains under the ice covering until the end of March, whilst wide icefields continue to float in the middle of the lake until they are broken up by gales and scattered on the shores. Only a small part of the Ladoga ice is discharged by the Neva; but it is enough to produce in the middle of June a return of cold in the northern capital. The thickness of the ice does not exceed 3 or 4 feet; but during the alternations of cold and warm weather, with strong gales, in winter, heaps of ice, 70 and 80 feet high, are raised on the banks and on the icefields. The water of the lake is in continuous rotatory motion, being carried along the western shore from north to south, and along the eastern from south to north. The vegetation on the shores is poor; immense forests, which formerly covered· them, are now mostly destroyed; but the fauna of the lake is somewhat rich; a species of seal which inhabits its waters, as well as several arctic species of crustaceans, recall its former connexion with the Arctic Ocean. The great variety of sweet water Diatomaceae which are found in the ooze of the deepest parts of the lake has also an arctic character. Fishing is very extensively carried on. Navigation on the lake, which is practicable for only one hundred and eighty days in the year, is rather difficult owing to fogs and gales, which are often accompanied, even in April and September, with snow storms. The prevailing winds are north-west and south-west; northeast winds cause the water to rise in the south-western part of the lake, sometimes from 3 to 5 feet. A phenomenon very similar to the seiches of the Lake of Geneva is observed in connexion with the rise and fall of the barometer. Steamers ply regularly in two directions from St Petersburg—to the monasteries of Konevetz and Valaam, and to the mouth of the Svir, whence they go up that river to Lake Onega and Petrozavodsk; and no less than from 600 to 800 small vessels transport timber, firewood, planks, iron, kaolin, granite, marble, fish, hay, and various small wares from the northern shore to Schlüsselburg, and thence to St Petersburg. The rivers Volkhov, Syass, and Svir being parts of the three great systems of canals which unite the upper Volga with the Gulf of Finland, and the navigation on Lake Ladoga being too dangerous for small craft, three canals with an aggregate length of 70 miles were dug along the southern shore of Lake Ladoga, uniting the mouths of these three rivers with the Neva at Schlüsselburg; thousands of vessels pass yearly along them on their way to St Petersburg. The population on the shores of the lake is sparse, and the towns Schlüsselburg, with 6000 inhabitants, New Ladoga (4500), Kexholm (1000), and Serdobol (800) are poor; many small villages are situated on the southern, north-eastern, and western shores, but the total population of the shores of Lake Ladoga does not exceed 35,000. The monasteries of Valaam, founded in 960, on the island of same name, and Konevskiy, on the Konevetz island, founded in 1393, are highly venerated, and are visited every year by many thousands of pilgrims.
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