I rode on rejoicing to have found a new country. I passed between orchards through which little brooks were sparkling, and over mountain streams that every now and then crossed my path, giving my " Saleni Aleikum^^ to all the men I met, and delighted to have an opportmiity to dismount and help a Tartar girl up with her bundle of lice. The elegant mansions of Russian princes and generals I passel with scarcely a glance, and hastened on towards a Tartai village that I saw picturesquely perched on the point of a rock, which could be reached only by climbing a succession of terraces. The mosque lay below concealed in a grove of walnut trees. I soon saw a group of Tartars, and approaching them threw in a few words of Russian, in hopes that they would catch somewhere, and kindle a reply. I was not mistaken. A hanasome young Tartar stepped forward and asked me what I wanted. His name, he said, was Ismael, and when I begged him to shew me into his village, and more especially into his house, he trotted cheerfully on to comply with my request, with that ready courtesy of wliich 1 have seen so many instances among these people. " Derekoi," the village to which we had scrambled up, was, like almost all Tartar villages, most romantically situated. The dwellings lie thickly scattered about among the trees, and leaning on one side against the mountain, so that one may ride over their flat roofs. These are large, as they supply the place of a courtyard covered with earth and small stones, laid smooth with a sort of roller, and supported on tliin trunks of trees. Glass windows there are not, but in their place wooden flaps, which have a disagreeable effect, • as if the houses were blind. Every house has its grove of mulberry, fig, aud wabiut trees, which have the double recommendatioii of beaiing fruit, and tajung most beautiful and picturesque forms. Before the house was seated Ismael's sister, weaving at a handloom, a kind of fillet worn on the head by the women, and called a " marmara." She retreated as we approached, and I wished to follow her and have a peep into the house, but this Ismael would not allow.
He said it was all dirty and nasty in there ; but he would take me into a better room that was kept for company, if he could only find his brother who kept the keys. Thereupon he mounted on the roof of his habitation, and began to look over all the neighbouring roofs in search of his brother. Nothing is more amusing than a survey of this kind over the roofs of Tartar houses, where all sorts of occupations are usually going on — clothes hanging out, fruits, com or cakes being spread out to dry, and groups of people gathered in conversation, and paying and receiving visits according to the plan adopted by cats among us. In tliis new field of observation I found so much to attract my attention that I did not descend till the last rail to prayer sounded from the Muezzin, and I saw the yellow slippers hastening from all sides towards the mosque.
On returning to Yalta, in passing through one of the little back streets, my ear was caught by the sound of a Tartar song that came from a kind of grocer's shop ; I entered and found two Tartars, an Armenian, and a Circassian, handsome fellows, with formidable moustaches, and looking far more like warriors than tradesmen. How would our pale shrivelled twisters of paper bags look by the side of them ? I begged to be favoured with some songs, and they immediately complied, only waiting to fetch a neighbour, who, they said, was a better singer than either of them. I made them explain to me the contents of each song. Love formed, as usual, the principal theme, but some, to my surprise, were on historical subjects. One treated of Krim-Gerei, the last distinguished Khan of the Crimea, the friend of the well-known French ambassador. Baron de Tott, — another of Khan Devlet-Gerei, — a third of the conquest of the Crimea by the Russians, — a fourth of the taking of Kasan ; and though I cannot say the melodies were much to my taste, the singers themselves seemed so well pleased with them, and I found so many things to ask and to talk of, that I remained sitting on an apple chest, where I had at first taken my place, till a late hour in the night.
On the following morning at seven o'clock we were on horseback, fully prepared and accoutred to commence our eight days' campaign in the Crimea. At the windows and in the balconies we saw some of our steamboat companions, drinking their coffee and wondering at our briskness, and we galloped off, amidst a shower of good wishes, in an easterly direction towards the ruins of an old Genoese castle, which we had fixed on as our station for the niffht.