This Uman begins to withdraw from its shores as early as June, and to deposit the salt in small crystals. Towards the end of July this deposit becomes so considerable as to rcAvard the trouble of collecting it, and the usually desolate shores of the lake begin to be enlivened by the preparations for the salt harvest. The officers of the crown (the crown has the monopoly of salt) begin to arrive. The nobility of Podolia, Bessarabia, and New Russia, send their agents, and the German colonists and other speculators assemble, and purcliase from the crown the right of collecting salt at an appointed spot. An officer of the police superintends the whole operation, and declares when the salt is what is called ripe ; since to begin the harvest too soon, would be to lose the chance of further deposits, while to
delay it too long would be to incur the risk of ha\-ing all the salt washed away by the autumn rains.
The whole Uman is then divided by stakes as far towards the middle as possible, and each hires a portion of from ten to twenty fathoms breadth, according to his means. Near the shore the crystals are small, and lie only about from half an inch to an inch deep ; fiii-ther on, three or four inches; and towards the middle, a foot thick. The thickness of the bed vaiies, however, being greater in dry, and less in moist years. It also lies deeper towards the sea than in the shallow parts of the lake ; and consequently, some places being more productive than others, there is no end of the quarrelling, disputing, and bribery employed to obtain them. The best are reserved for the crown.
The work of shovelling up and carrying aAvay the crystaUized salt is not altogether so easy as might be thought, for the salt is frequently damp, and the ground marshy, or even covered with M^ater one or two feet deep; and besides this, the inconvenience of working in an atmosphere so saturated with salt are considerable, for the clothes and implements soon become incrustcd with it, and the skin breaks and forms sores that render the people incapable of work. To avoid sinking in the marshy soil, they bind boards to their feet, on which, of course, their movements are awkward enough ; but against the influence of the salt on the skin there is no remedy but that of frequent washing in fresh water, and wearing gloves, and neither of these resources are easily obtained. The horses suffer much from the effect of the salt on their legs and feet, and the labourers often perish miserably in the marsh when the boards break beneath their feet, since no boat can come near them. On account of these hardships and perils, the work is, of course, highly paid,— a labourer generally receiving from 50 to 60 rubles a month.
Private persons carry away at once the quantity of salt they have obtained, but the government, after filling up the vacancies made m their storehouses on the Dnieper by the consumption of t'he past year, bmlds up the remainder into great heaps on the shore.
To protect them from the injuries of rain, wind, &c., fires are kindled on their tops with straw and light combustibles, by the heat of which a certain portion of the salt is melted, and formed into a crust, so hard that it is difficult to break it even with crowbars. These stacks of salt are called skirti, and one of them contains generally about 400,000 pounds of salt. In 1826, an unusually productive year, it is said that upwards of six millions of poods of salt were obtained from the three Bessarabian Hmans. The first liman we met with was that of Teligul — forty miles long, and about a mile-and-a-half broad. Beyond this the road runs along close to the sea-shore, which is thinly scattei-ed with reed huts, inhabited bv Cossacks, stationed here to look out for smugglers. No boat is allowed to land on this coast without a permission from the quarantine establishment of Odessa, and nothingnot ev^en drift timberto be taken from the sea. We visited some of these Cossack posts, and found their pikes piled up close to the surf, their sabres hanging on the walls of thenhuts, and all clean and in good order.
Tlie station lay on the steppe, close to the small liman of Buyuhk, and
♦ In this very year, 1842, at some of the limans, the whole harvest of the year has been destroyed by some heavy rains that sei in at an unusually early period.