In the course of the afternoon we drove over the steppe to the Tatar vill^e of Aran, where we applied to the moUa ■ for a guide, the right man to be appealed to when travelling in the Crimea, for the moUa is not only the chief authority, but he is usually a person of more substance than his neighbours, and with more spacious quarters wherein to practise that hospitality which is the great virtue of the Crimean Tatars, and so specially needed by the traveller in their land. We were kept waiting some little time, and when our guide appeared, he excused the delay by saying that the jnolla had been consulting the Koran, tliat he might frame a prayer which should heal him of an ophthalmic disorder from which he was suffering, for his eyes were red and inflamed. He conducted us to the source of the Salghyr in the depths of a rocky glen, where the water issues noiselessly out of the earth into a pool, over which lies an enormous mass of red porphyry of the
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* A carriage and pair of horses may be hired by the day at Sympheropol, for lo to 15 roubles. The chaise for a carriage from Sympheropol to Yalta {poat.horves beiiiG employed) is 30 roubles. For routes, see Appendix XV.
• A chief ntagistrate.
by Google mountain, in the form of an arch, and it thence falls in a succession of cascades, over fragments of rock, to disappear in the direction of the valley. The Tatar assured us that the pool, of considerable depth, is well supplied with trout. The temperature of the water at the spring was 52°, and of the air 75°.
Horses were not to be obtained at Alann; we therefore proceeded to the village of Byouk Ankol, where the molla made every arrangement for our ascent of the Tchadyr-dagh on the 4,800 following day, the price agreed upon for the journey being three roubles for each horse, and three roubles for the guide, who was to be ready to start at 2 A.M., that we might attain the summit before sunrise. In the molla's cottage, we had the use of a room in every respect scrupulously clean, and profusely decorated, as is the custom, with towels embroidered in gold, silver or silk thread, which are suspended about the walls as we hang our pictures; it was also well supplied with mattresses and pillows of every hue, for the greater the display of towels and bedding, the more affluent are supposed to be the circumstances of the householder; the sacking of the latter, more especially, denoting the condition of the family, for it may be of gold brocade or of the most ordinary dyed cotton.
It was close upon 3 AM. before we jumped into our saddles, through no fault, it must be averred, of the guide, and we endeavoured to make up for lost time with our slu^ish horses, but they refused to exceed a crawling pace. It was therefore half-past five, and the sun high up in the heavens, before we got to a few stunted firs on the table-land, where we dismounted to walk up the ' tent mountain,' at the top of which a strong easterly breeze was blowing. The ascent is gradual and easy, and the road which winds through groves of hazel and forests of oak is excellent, and by Google even carriageable part of the way. At 6.30 A.M. thermometer was at 52°.
The ' tent mountain ' rises some hundreds of feet above the table-fand, and is itself divided latitudinaily in two parts by a dell which extends the entire length, from wsw. to ENE. The slopes facing the north were richly covered with grass, affording good pasture to the flocks that graze about the moiuitain yaylas during the summer months; whereas the opposite slopes were perfectly bare.
The view extends, on the one hand, from the vineyards and poplars of Aloushta, to the dip in the yaylas at Balaclava and the low coast beyond Sevast<ipol, and on the other to the bold headlands at Soudak and Tchdbin-bash. The day was ushered in brightly, but the horizon to seaward remained dim — a similar dusky horizon bounding the vast steppe and obscuring it in the distance Conspicuous were the Salghyr, with its narrow green. banks, trailing away to the north like a monstrous reptile, and the whitewashed churches and green domes of Symphenipol, while far away to the eastward, we could discern the gardens of Kira-soubazar, like an oasis in the desert.