After a little while, however, the storm began to abate, we got up a bit of a sail, and in the evening" we arrived at Akerman safe and sound. Even our Pole, after he had properly dried the outward man, and moistened the inward with a glass of Greek wine, became another creature.
The German sound of the name of Akerman is entirely accidental, since it is composed of two Turkish words signifying" " white town." As the city enjoys a privilege of exemption from the plague of passports, its population is continually increasing, and cannot be less than 13,000, for, according to the poUce-master and the German apothecary of the place, the names of 8000 men are inscribed in the city books. It is absurdly rated in the St. Petersburg almanack as at 2500, whilst there are at least as many houses. The place has exactly the appearance of a great beaver city, or of one built for the court of the river gods of the Dniester. The houses, with very few exceptions, are low and built of reeds, and the streets, running over an extent of two miles in length, by a mile and a half in breadth, wind like rivers, so that one can never see twenty pacjes before one. During the storm of the preceding day, it was evident they had in reality been turned into water-courses. The town of Akerman is situated in too remote a comer of the civilized Avorld, for the use of glass for windows to have yet become general, and many of the houses receive the hght only through a piece of bladder. The place has always had the fortune to lie at the uttermost extremity of the empire to which it belonged. It was the most distant colony of the Romans in these regions ; it fell in the north-eastern Umit of the Turkish dommions, and belongs now to the extreme south-western possessions of the Russians. Of the Roman sway no trace is any longer visible, unless perhaps the foundations of an old fortress, in the centre of one of whose courts rises a Turkish minaret, whence there is an extensive view of the town. The finest buildings in it at present are a Russian barrack and the prison, which are both so decorated with columns that they look like Grecian temples. It has, like most of the cities in this part of the world, a medley population, composed of Asiatics and Byzantine Greeks, Jews, Armenians, Germans, Frenchmen, Bulgarians, and Moldavians ; the last named, however, though the city is situated in Moldavia, form the smallest portion. The majority of the inhabitants who occupy the reed-houses, make use of neither tables, chairs, nor benches, but live in the true Oriental style, with divans and carpets.
A wretched little boat, a kayook, made of a few rough boards nailed together, without even a rudder, served to convey us from Akerman to Bughiisi, a village near the mouth of the liman, inhabited only by Catholics, for the sectarian animosities which separate them from the Protestants, amongst whom they include the Russians, are unfortunately as rancorous in this sequestered spot as in any other part of the world. Our boatman caught up a bit of wood that was lying on the shore to supply the place of a rudder, and oft' we set, but a fresh breeze from the sea lashing up the waters of the liman, made the passage in our little nutshell very rough, and as we could not tack, we were forced to land considerably higher up than we wished, and walk back a few versts along the shore.
In all the maps I have ever seen of this region, this liman is represented as an open bay, wliilst it is in reality closed like all the rest by a peressip, broken by two gheerls, the western one, through which the vessels enter the liman, bemg very deep and a verst broad. As the seawater
444 FISHERIES OF THE DNIESTER.
only enters these gheerls during violent gales from the south, the water in the liman is generally fresh, and contains fresh-water fish. Along the whole peressip runs a range of fisherman's huts, where we proposed on the first night of our arrival to seek a lodging, having previously furnished ourselves among the Galaktophagi with milk, eggs, bread, &c., since we knew that the herds kept by the Ichthyophagi yielded none of these commodities.
We sought out the largest of the huts, and begged permission from the master, who was a Greek, to spend a night in it. The sun unluckily was already set, and we could not witness the fishing, as it was ended for the day. We were therefore obhged to content ourselves with inquiries and conversations concerning the fisheries, and as in the course of them, I learnt many things which may help to complete the picture of the Black Sea, and which are not to be found in other books, I may as well take this opportunity of throwing together such particulars as I collected.