There is a standard apricot tree at Karagoss, the girth of which is eighteen feet one inch.
The cultivation of kitchen gardens in the Crimea depends much upon irrigation, and is performed by setting out, or sowing plants, or seeds, in small beds, so intersected by trenches, that the water, when let in, runs to every plant. The value of all garden ground is estimated by the facility with which it may be watered, and a handsome consideration is often given by one proprietor to another, for the use of water which flows through the land of the one, from a spring on the other's estate. The water is headed up for the purpose, and when the plants are first raised, is distributed to them twice a day, but afterwards, as they gain strength, this labour is proportionably lessened.
The cabbages of the Crimea are remarkable for their size, often weighing ten oka, or thirty pounds Russian. These are chiefly cultivated by the Greeks, who, with this intent, give a very high rent for new ground, or eligible situations in the neighbourhood of water. They bestow much care upon weeding and irrigation, and the price of the cabbages thus raised, taken promiscuously, is about twelve rubles per hundred. There is land in the Crimea which has let for cabbage gardens for more than a century, and has never been manured. Tobacco, which is grown in considerable quantities, is likewise cultivated by the Greeks ; its quality is by no means so fine and mild as that of the Turkish tobacco, the use ofwhich is very general in the south of Russia, and which may be bought for five rubles the oka. It is well known that, with the Tatars, the custom of smoking is notconfined to the male sex ; but I have remarked that, among the women, none but tne old ones practise it. Ofthe pumpkin the Tatars make a very good dish, by boiling it, and eating it with salt, pepper, and butter. It is brought to the consistency of gooseberry fool, and has a taste somewhat like that ofboiled apples. Potlejan* is another favourite food, being boiled with meat, or fried in batter. The maize, or Indian corn, is boiled when very young, and eaten with cold butter. When ripe it is ground, and its flour makes excellent puddings.
Capsicum is much cultivated in the Tatar gardens, and is prepared and used as common pepper.
A Tatar proverb of long standing, but still very correct, commemorates the excellence of " Perekop water-melons, Osmantchuke honey, Haussanbey cabbages, and Karagoss quinces." Perekop, as is well known, is situated on the isthmuswhichjoins theCrimea to the main-land. * By Pallas, written patildshan; a sort of gourd, and called by him the egg fruit, or mclongena. Vol. ii. xp, 391.
The water-melons raised there, and at Cherson, are remarkable for their size and flavour, and are considered an acceptable present even at Constantinople. Osmantchuke is a little Tatar and Russian village, at the foot ofMount Agirrnish. Haussanbey is the property of a Greek merchant at Kaffa, and adjoins the estate at Karagoss, on which it is dependent for water.
The quinces of this latter place are still very abundant in favourable years ; but the blossom, ofthe quince tree, of all others the most delicate in its appearance, is equally so in its formation, and a heavy shower of rain during the time of its flowering inevitably destroys the produce of that season.
Shubash, and all the little villages which are scattered thickly around it, are remarkable for the growth of onions, which are very large and excellent, and, if well got in and properly taken care of, will keep through the severest and most variable winters, a quality which those grown on the south coast donot possess. In the autumn of 1817 we purchased a quantity of these from a Tatar of one of the villages, who grew that u year no less than 10.000 oka of onions. Their price, according to the season, is from seven to twelve kopeeks the oka. Such as are intended to be kept, are preserved in sheds dug under ground, and roofed so as to exclude, as carefully as possible, the admission of frost or wet. The roofs are covered with straw, reeds, or weeds, and afterwards with a layer of earth, almost a foot in thickness. The granaries in which the Tatars deposit their corn are of a similar construction, beingdug nearly six feet in depth, and then caved under. They are so formed as to contain from fifteen or sixteen to fifty or sixty tchetverts, according to the usual stock ofthe persons to whom they belong.