Instances have frequently been known, of the ice from the Crimea to Odessa being solid enough to travel over. The same thing has, indeed, sometimes happened at the northern part of the Adriatic, but there it is an uncommon occurrence ; whereas it has been observed that the navigation of Odessa has been interrupted oftener, and for a longer time than that of Copenhagen.
There is no doubt that the immense extent of the flat steppes exercises an evil influence on the Euxine. From its shores to Arkhangel and Kamtshatka no mountain wall is interposed, to shelter the Black Sea from the severity of the north and east winds ; nay, not even hiUs or forests occur capable of tempering them ; and to this it is probably owing that the roughness of the climate about Odessa greatly exceeds what might be expected from its southerly position.
The most dreaded part of the Black Sea is still, as in the time of the Argonauts, the entrance to the Thracian Bosphorus. Many vessels perish there every year, and much depends on having a well-built argo.
The trade of Odessa is, of course, powerfully influential on the welfare of the surrounding countries, and in proportion as it has grown rich and populous the provinces of Bessarabia, New Russia, Podolia, the Ukraine, and the Crimea, have become peopled and cultivated. The town pays to the country-people, merely for the carriage of goods, yearly, from three to four millions of rubles ; many lands are cultivated solely on account of Odessa capitalists, and they are always willing to make advances, and receive corn in payment of the debt. They often afford the same assistance to the breeders of cattle, and take tallow and leather in return.
Many Odessa merchants have invested their capital in great estates, and, like the Polish landovniers, produce for themselves the articles, which, as merchants, they afterwards export.
The years in which the trade of Odessa developed itself in the most rapid and brilliant manner, and on which the province as well as the inhabitants of the city look back as on a golden age, were, from causes to be sought in the position of Europe at the period, those from 1815 to 1820. The merchants tell with glee of the enormous prices the wheat rose to ; the waggoners how they earned five or six rubles for going merely from ihe warehouse to the harbour ; and the Ukraine nobles still glory in the magnificent balls they were able to give, at a time when they found their corn transformed so easily and rapidly into silver.
The great revenues of the city of Odessa, and the simple and easy manner in which they are collected, might lead one to expect more important undertakings for the pubHc good than those of mere external decoration, but the heterogeneous character of the population may perhaps account for its more than common deficiency in public spirit. Good pavements, a few public gardens, a splendid staircase for foot-passengers from the sea-shore to the Boulevards, a handsome custom house, a botanical garden, and a city library which no one goes near, — these are the only public works that have as yet been thought of. — No hospital, poorhouses, or asylums for orphans are anywhere to be seen, and it must be confessed that the selfishness of our age is nowhere more coarsely manifested than in the streets of Odessa, where, among so many magnificent private dwellings, not one is to be found devoted to the pubhc good.