At the bazaars, the brass founders, slipper-makers, leatherworkers, cloth and silk merchants, &c., are not to be found as we are accustomed to see them in the East, each trade at its own row of stalls; but they are mixed up here and there, for Kira-sou-bazar is no longer a prosperous city. Dubois states, on the authority of Peyssonel (1755), that as many as 4CX3,ooo blades were manufactured yearly in the Crimea, chiefly in this town, and exported even to the Caucasus; now BaghtchasaraT of itself is able to supply the demand among the reduced Tatar population of the peninsula, who prefer their own cutlery to any of foreign make. These bazaars, however, are still famous for the black and grey Bokhara lamb-skins, which are sold at 3 to 6 roubles a-picce. The stalls are kept chiefly by Tatars, but there are many Armenians and Greeks,
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who carry on the trade in Russian cottons and foreign silks and calicoes.
During our stay of three hours we saw one female only, an old crone who, like the b^ging women at the outskirts, was carefully veiled with the ydshmAk; the fair sex is evidently kept in the strictest seclusion.
Refreshments are to be had at the clottoub upon application to a member, or at an eating-house kept by a Greek, where we obtained a good plain dish of meat, and some of the worst wine of the Crimea. It is not advisable to pass the night at Kira-soubazar.
The slopes around the city are covered with burying-placcs, thickly studded with narrow head-stones set in the ground at every imaginable angle; the Tatars hold their graveyards in great veneration, and never suffer them to be converted to any other use; the antiquity, therefore, of 3 village may be pretty well imagined by the condition and proportionate number ot graves on the land that adjoins it.
From K^ra- sou'bazar, a long and fearfully dusty road lies over a chalky district, until at Sony, a comfortable-looking Russian village, the scene changes, and the ground is covered with turf, affording fair pasturage; but there is ever the same absence of habitations or of any sort of encampment between post-stations, as we had noticed from the time of leaving Theodosia. We met few travellers driving, fewer on foot, and no tramps or vagrants. At the 12 versts post beyond Souy, Mount Tchadyr-dagh appears in the distance ahead to the left, reminding one greatly of the rock of Gibraltar as seen from off its eastern shore, and a further drive of 10 versts brought us to Sympherdpol, the chief city in the Crimea.
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I passed the night at the St. Petersburg h6tel, a busy and noisy house, where the cuisine is inferior to that at Zaitzofif's restaurant
In the palmy days of the khanate of the Crimea, the residence of the Kaym-makam, ' lieutenant ' or ' vicar ' of the khan, the chief dignitary in his dominion, was at the second capital, a place called Ak-m&jyd, ' white mosque.' The Kaym-makam was commanderin-chief of the forces; he held his divan daily, and assumed the r^ency upon the death of the sovereign, until the nomination of a successor by the sultan, Ak-m^sjyd, the extreme point reached by the attenuated forces under the firebrand. General Miinich,*when the Russians invaded the peninsula in 1 736, is now only a wretched Tatar quarter in the modem capital, raided since the complete occupation of the Crimea by the Russians, and which received the name of Sympher6pol, ' because subjects of all nationalities were invited to settle in it. The narrow crooked lanes and hidden dwellings of Ak-m&jyd, present a singular contrast to the fine, broad, but dusty streets, whitewashed churches and lat^e public buildings, boulevard and gardens, in the new town.
The market-place of Sympher6pol is the busiest locality in the Crimea, of which it is the chief mart. The early morning is the right time for seeing the crowds of people of difiercnt tongues, such as the Tatars of the steppe, some of them being the real Nc^ar, Armenians, Greeks, and Jews, with their madjaras, beasts of burden, and droves of camels, all driving hard bargains, and vying with each other in cupidity and rapacity. A few sturdy German colonists were moving in the throng, looking too matter of fact 10 lake part in the haggling, while some Russian customers seemed to be wisely watching their opportunity for stepping in
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at the proper moment, and making their purchases to the best advant^e.