monastery is hidden. A door and staircase, cut in the rock, form the only entrance to this great Hermitage, which was no doubt first created by the ancient Troglodytes, or dwellers under ground, whose remains are so numerous in the Crimea, as all the rocks near the monastery, which are composed of chalk, are pierced by ancient grottoes, which are now only used as cellars and poultry-yards, although they were inhabited by the monks so lately as the time of Pallas, in 1794. The monastery consists of many large buildings, several of which are devoted to the reception of strangers. The church has unfortunately been rebuilt, and the ancient chapel that stood here has been totally destroyed. A rivulet runs in front of the houses, and trickles into a stone basin, shaded by poplars, while below it are terraced gardens and small vineyards.

This little nook generally enjoys a most unbroken quiet, but on the 23rd of April, St. George's-day-when crowds arrive, and the plateau above is covered with huts and tents-the Greeks, from all parts of Crimea, flock to the place, and the women especially frequent the fête, and embellish the scene by their picturesque dresses and traditional beauty. As in most religious festivals, the world always claims its part, and a kind of fair is held here in the early part of the day, at which much business is done. But all at once the scene changesthe hour of divine service has arrived, the crowd flocks to the church, and, as soon as the benediction has been given, there is a rush to the basin containing the water, which is supposed at this season to be a remedy against all kinds of diseases.

On a terrace, close to the monastery, there are traces of several Greek temples. A dreary and barren road leads past the village of Karany, through a valley, to Balaklava, at which town terminates the Chersonese. The Chersonese in winter serves as a refuge to a great quantity of bustards, that are driven from the

plains by the snow. Thousands may be seen at once, and the hunters conceal themselves in little cabins and shoot them as they pass, for the birds, tired and thin at this season of the year, fly very low, and may be almost caught by the hand. There are two kinds, a large and a small; the latter are better eating, and both are very cheap, and a favourite article of food in Sevastopol. When the snow covers the Chersonese, and the cold reaches sometimes 16° Fahrenheit, the bustards fly to the southern coast, to Laspi, where it is always warm.

Dubois, vol. vi. p. 201.

CHAPTER XI.

ON THE ANCIENT INHABITANTS OF THE CRIMEA.

-

The Cimmerii The Tauri Connexion of Greece with the Black Sea Digression on the Crypts of the Crimea - B.C. 600: The Scythians - The Greek colonies, B.C. 650 Milesian emigration Dorian emigration Trade of these early times — Mithridates, reigned в.c. 120–63 - - A.D. 62: The Alaus A.D. 100-200: The Goths -A.D. 376: The Huns Second attack of the Huns - Justinian, reigned A.D. 527–565 · A.D. 679: The Khazars — A.D. 900-1000: The Petchenegues — About 1204: The Comans -1226: The Tatars - The Genoese 1473: Kaffa taken by the Turks The Black Sea then shut up to European nations - Mixture of races in present inhabitants of Crimea.

HAVING had occasion to mention various nations who have occupied the Crimea, it will perhaps be useful to bring together in one succinct view the numerous revolutions which the peninsula has undergone, and the order in which the various races of its inhabitants succeeded one another from the earliest times.

First of all come the Cimmerians, who belong partly to history and partly to fable. The story in the 'Odyssey' describes them as dwelling beyond the ocean stream, plunged in darkness, and unblest by the rays of Helios (the sun). According to Herodotus, they originally occupied the Steppes of Southern Russia, or the country between the Borysthenes and the Tanais, and being expelled from their country by the Scythians, skirted the shores of the Euxine, and devastated, for a number of years, the highly civilized countries of Asia Minor. The poets of that age lament the destruction of every exquisite production of Greek genius by this barbarian people, who were nomadic "milkers of mares," like the Scythians, and wandered in tents over their grassy Steppes. They had already disappeared in the time of Herodotus, at which time the tombs of their kings were shown near

167

the Dniestr. They left their name in the Cimmerian Bosphorus, while the darkness in which they were supposed to have lived has perpetuated their memory down. to our own times

"In black Cimmerian darkness ever dwell."

There was another people mentioned as early as the time of Homer, who, being mountaineers, were able to preserve their nationality for a very long period of time. These were the Tauri, who appear to have been a people of a most savage and unamiable character.

It has been already said that they sacrificed to a cruel goddess all shipwrecked mariners, and they sometimes not only made offerings but feasts of human victims. These habits have procured them an immortal infamy in the writings of the Greeks and Romans, and, through the story of Iphigenia, have made the Crimea associated with one of the most famous legends of the Greek mythology. Her history and that of her fate-urged family, connected with great events, abounding in scenes of concentrated action, laid in mysterious and wild countriescontained much matter calculated to rouse the passions, and have made it a favourite subject for poets both in ancient and modern times.

The works of almost every great poet of antiquity contain allusions to the tragic history of the Atridæ, and the fate of Iphigenia has occupied in modern times the pen of Racine and Göthe. It was also a popular subject with ancient painters, and Timanthes, having represented her just about to be sacrificed, after exhausting all his art in depicting the grief of the other bystanders, drew a veil over the face of her father as the best means of representing his inexpressible anguish.

The story of Iphigenia is not an isolated instance of the attention which the most ancient Greeks seem in numerous cases to have directed to the East, and the expeditions of Phrixus and Helle, of the Argonauts, the

long wanderings of Ulysses on the coasts of Colchis, the Crimea, and the Cimmerian Bosphorus, and the Achæans, who were said, in returning from Troy, to have settled on the Circassian coast,-all have the same tendency.

In the time of Herodotus the Tauri occupied the hillcountry of the Crimea, and were in all probability the people who formed the numberless dwellings and towns cut in the solid rock, which are found in many parts of the country. The chalk or green-sandstone formation, easily wrought, homogeneous, with few fissures, and horizontal beds, was peculiarly adapted for this purpose; and wherever it crops out of the soil, there are sure to be found these subterranean dwellings.

These crypts are the most curious remains of antiquity in the Crimea, and abound chiefly in the south-western parts, forming perhaps the only relics of its most ancient inhabitants. Not that the use of crypts was confined solely to the most ancient times, for many Christian churches are found in them, and they must therefore have been inhabited at least down to the fourth or fifth centuries of the Christian era, when the inhabitants of the Crimea were converted to Christianity. Although there are few countries of the world in which they exist in such great numbers as in a portion of the Crimea, still this habit of living in subterranean dwellings was very common among ancient nations, and instances of it are familiar to all. The crypts are the only relics of those ages in the infancy of the world, when, according to mythic legends, men dwelt in caverns and were nourished on

acorns.

A large portion of the populations of Asia, when they became fixed, began by burrowing out holes for themselves in the rocks. Caverns were then used as their temples and their sepulchres.

The rock temples scattered over various parts of India are some of them imperishable monuments of times on which history is silent.