I rode on rejoicing to have found a new country. I passed between orchards through which little brooks wers sparkling, and over mountain streams that every now and then crossed my path, gi^'iug my " ISaleni Aleiktirriy^ to all the men I met, and delighted to have an opportmiity to dismount and help a Tartar girl up with her bundle of nee. The elegant mansions of Russian princes and generals I passed 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 tlirew ki 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 Isniael, 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 wluch 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 plo^e 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 wabut trees, which have the double recomnaturally, been bestowed on the cultivation of tliis favoured region, and its attractions have, of course, drawn towards it many foreigners — Greeks, Genoese, and Russians especially. A precipitous mountain wall with rocky peaks, 4000 feet high, separates this region from the interior, where the tribes of Goths, Tartars, and others, formerly drove their flocks over the grassy lidges to the very brink of the natural barrier, and yet remained entirely separate from and independent of the southern region.
The southern shore of the Crimea is always spoken of, even now, as a distinct country, and in the interior of Russia and in Moscow it is common enough to hear it spoken of simply as the " south-coast." " These wines are from the south coast," people will say, without mentioning that they allude to the south coast of the Crimea. It is not however to the whole south coast that the peculiar advantages I have described belong, but only to a small part from Balaklava to the defile of KJhtatir Dagh.