At the top lay an ell and a half of fine fat soil, and immediately beneath it the fatal bed of calcareous earth ; below that some fathoms of yellow clay, then five or six of red, under this again a very thick stratum of the rotten kind of stone, of which Odessa is built, and below this again, reaching to the sea-shore, firm blue clay.
All the upper strata, even that of the stone, are penetrable by water, which never accumulates till it reaches the blue clay, and consequently all wells must be dug at least down to that level. The blue clay is the lowest stratum known, as, of course, no other than a purely scientific interest could induce any one to dig deeper, and it is continued even below the sea, which Ues in it as in a basin. It forms the anchoring ground of ships at Odessa. The extraordinary uniformity of the upper surface of the steppe, can only be a consequence of the internal uniformity of geological structure.
I might easily have found a broader road to the German colony of which I was in search, but I preferred the narrow and lonely one, and rejoiced at finding a region hitherto visited by no traveller, of which I might consider mysell, I thought, as a kind of discoverer. I was looking round with great satisfaction on this my maritime kingdom, hidden from all but the birds by the high wall that rose above me, when I suddenly perceived that there was one to dispute my right. A little column of smoke rose from a hut surrounded by a neat enclosure, with cattle gi'azing, and a modest fruit garden laid out on a fallen mass of land, which had probably occupied its present position for hundreds of years. I passed the garden-gate, when a Bulgarian colonist appeared, and immediately opened it to admit mo, iu a most hospitable manner. Although the sun had disappeared from us behind the steppe, and only now illuminated the sails of the distant ships, I was not far from my colony, and could not resist an invitation to make a short halt at this interesting settlement.
The Bulgaiians have the reputation of being the hardest working people in the steppe, and fai' more mdustrious than the Germans. They are also the best housekeepers among the people of different nations settled here, practise the strictest economy, and neither gamble nor drink. This carefulness degenerates in some instances, no doubt, into odious parsimony. Even when they have amassed considerable sums of money, they continue to live in mud huts, and often conceal their treasme from the knowledge of wife and children. " A Bulgarian," said a German colonist, who, it must be owned, looked only on the shady side of the picture, " works like a horse, scrapes together like a magpie, and lives like a hog." Cattlebreeding and trading in cattle are their favourite occupations, and with the exception of the great land-owners they have the largest herds on the steppe. Some Bulgarians were named to me who possessed as much as from 7000 to 12,000 oxen, and immense flocks of sheep. Besides these, they are often proprietors of the bashtans, or vegetable gardens.
I inquired of my host whether things went well with liim, and he answered, '' God be praised, we live pretty well — bit by bit^ This is a mode of expression pecuhar to the Malorossians ; careless of the futm'e, they live from horn to hour as the glass runs. And do we not all live so ? Life, in all its bitterness, could scarcely be endured, did we not take up the bm-den piecemeal.
In the hut we found the wife of the Bulgarian, who, as it usually happens with women, had preserved the national features more unaltered than her husband. Their marriage was childless, but, in the absence of dearer pets, she played with the house cat and her consort Tom, and the feline pair occupied the snuggest place near the stove, and were evidently favourites. The apartment was, according to the custom of the steppe, strewed thickly with grass, and adorned with flowers fastened about the walls in the form of crosses. My hosts entertained me hospitably with milk, and, as I had ingratiated myself with the wife by stroking Basdius and Marie videlicet, the tom-cat and his lady), she presented me at parting with a bunch of sweet thyme as a nosegay.