The great Novgorod of the Middle Ages, the quiet, decayed cathe dral town of to-day, lies on both sides of the deep and broad Vol khov, on its way from Lake Ilmen to Ladoga and the Baltic. Here we are about one hundred miles south-east of St. Petersburg. As in the Middle Ages, the Side or Quarter of St. Sophia still lies on the left of the Volkhov, the Commercial Side on the right. The eleventh-century cathedral of the Holy Wisdom, Saint Sophia, is still one of the historical monuments of Russia, while the walls of the Kremlin of Novgorod show how slender was the fourteenth century Russian skill in fortification.