the Taurida Division of the Colonists Boundary Line of Colonisation Of the Odessa Colony System adoptedby the Russian Oovernment Time of the earliest establishmentofthe Colonies Poll-Tax Power ofthe Officersofthe Crown over the Boors or Peasants Villages of the Crimea.
THE History of the Crimea has been detailed by many writers, from the time of its earliest inhabitants, the Taurians, almost to the present period. Of these histories, the most accredited is that by Sisterenchovitch, (aPolish nobleman), and published soon after the conquest by the Russians. He has been followed, amongst other and better writers, byM. Reuilly, who accompanied Monsieur le Due de Richelieu, when he was first appointed to the government of the Taurida. Reuilly was supposed to have been sent thither by Buonaparte, to sound the feelings of the Tatars, and ascertain the political state ofthe Crimea. His brief detail of the ancient history of this country is a recapitulation of the above-mentioned writer ; and in his continuation of its history, he had an able coadjutor and friend in Professor Pallas: nevertheless, there are subjects where the hasty judgment of aFrenchman is marked, or where the interval of time since he wrote, has produced change.
These alterations it is my intention to notice, and to fill up the small space which other writers have left, by giving some, though but an imperfect account, of the colonization of New Russia, t5r of the Taurida in general, of which the Crimea, it is well known, forms but a part.
New Russia comprehends the governments of uirida, Ekaterinoslaff, and Cherson : extending eastward, it includes the district of Ekaterinodar in Asia; and to the west, wemaycomprise within its boundaries, Bessarabia, and such part ofMoldavia as is now subject to Russia.
The whole of the government of the Taurida, with the exception of the Crimea, is one united mass of colonization. Of course, in point of numbers, the Russians rank first, and occupy by far the greatest part of this vast space, which, previously to its conquest from the Tatars, was a flat and fertile waste of interminable extent of pasture land, over which the Nomadic nation of Nogay Tatars wandered with their flocks and herds. It is now colonized by, 1st, Little Russians; 2nd, Great Russians; 3rd, Nogay Tatars; 6th, Armenians; and, 7th, Bulgarians. The two latter are comparatively few in number to the others.
The boundary line of colonization might be extended to the Danube, including Bessarabia and Moldavia, which assuredly form a most material part of this immense colony, which is twice as large as Great Britain, and its soil certainly thrice as fertile as that of England in general ; so much of which requires artificial help, and is made good and preserved so at great expence, while much is incapable of any great improvement. But in the country we are describing, Nature reigns in her greatest luxuriance ofvegetation, and varies little in the fertility ofthe soil. From the Don to the Danube, from Poland to the Black Sea, the soil is, with few exceptions, a dark putrid loam of great depth. This great colony likewise possesses the advantage of being traversed in almost every direction by some of the largest rivers in Europe the Danube, the Dniester, the Bog, the Dnieper, the Don, and the Kuban; the smallest ofwhich is in magnitude superior to the Thames or the Severn : the Danube, Dnieper, Bog, and Don are alone navigable ; the remainder fertilize the colony through which they flow, but do not contribute to float its produce to the sea. Upon this large and promising tract, the land measurers of the government, in the surveys which they were instructed to make, were ordered to set apart all the best spots, for the economical, or crown boors ; and this was effected, by fixing upon all the land on both sides of the great rivers above mentioned, from ten to fifteen miles on either side, right and left of the same.
The allotments to each village, were of course granted in proportion to the number of the colonists to be fixed there, but, universally speaking, the quantity of soil thrown to each village, would appear to us to be extremely large, and certainly out of all proportion to the population established upon it at the time, or even compared with what it has become since. The colony of Odessa, or the district around that city, consists of nearly five millions of acres of land ; and as the whole contains only 180 lots, the size of each allotment averages 28,000 acres :
many villages are much larger, and some ofthem have 100,000 acres, all of it fertileland.