According to statistical returns there are 563 springs and wells in and about Odessa. Where they hide themselves, I know not. In the suburbs and on the peressip there are certainly wells, but the water is quite brackish, and the Malaya Fontan is the only one from which water fit for drinking can be had. It is 2^ versts from the city, and nearly every house in the city is supplied from it. The oft-projected aqueduct not having yet been realised, the carrying of water affords occupation to no less than 2000 labourers, who are all day long conveying their indispensable merchandise in large casks fixed on wheels from the steppe to the city. Water, under these circumstances, is naturally rather an expensive article. People pay from twenty to forty rubles a month, according to the number of a family. One merchant, whose establishment was by no means large, told me he paid 450 rubles a year for water. There is a second spring, the Bolshaya Fontan, of which the water is excellent ; but, unfortmiately, it lies ten versts away from the town. The water of some of the other fountains is said to be drinkable in autumn, but is seldom used except for watering cattle.
However scarce water may be, and however difficult it may at times be to a temperate man to find the means of slaking liis thirst, he need never be at a loss for matter wherewith to appease his hunger. Large cabbages for winter store I saw selling at ruble the hundred ; peas and beans cost two rubles a pood, when they first came into season, but soon fell to sixty and even to forty copeks, and at last the price was too low to pay the country -people for bringing them into town. In the summer of 1838, I saw the German colonists throw away whole mountains of potatoes of the preceding year, merely that they might make room in their cellars for those of the fresh crop. Odessa may be said, with respect to food, to be in a constant state of repletion. Nowhere do I remember ever to have seen such quantities of eatables. Even the golden wheat may be seen spread out on cloths in the streets that it may dry in the sun.
EXCURSIONS IN THE STEPPESENVIRONS OF ODESSA.
In cities, the great assemblages of men, the traveller has so many new tilings to see at every turn, a single glance often showing him so much that is interesting, that he scarcely knows where to begin or where to end. Some time and some reflection are necessaiy to aiTange the abundant materials which almost overwhelm him at first; to find a clue to the labyrintli, and to make out from what point to view the heterogeneous masses of things presented to his notice. This was my case in Odessa, but I never ceased to wander through and examine the tovra till I had attained, at all events, a clear and perfect idea of the plan of the whole.
My travelling companion had now left me to go to the Sea of Asoph, in order to take possession of a little island left to him as a legacy, but as I had made many agreeable and useful acquaintances among the professors at the Lyceum and among the German merchants, I passed my time very pleasantly. After I had made myself well acquainted with the city, I thought I might venture to extend my inquiries and make some excursions : first to the environs of Odessa, and afterwards to the German colonies and the Dniester.