The Tatar fruit-stalls, in the right season, would be a credit to Covent Garden, with their piles of pears, delicious pippins, plums, grapes, figs, peaches, &c.; and the karpoka, ' water melon,' which is largely cultivated, and is probably the finest and best flavoured of any on the shores of the Black Sea and Mediterranean. The Tatars are very proud of their karpoUs, but many prefer slaking their thirst with bouzi, a fermented liquor made from millet, and hawked by the bousnyks, who sell it in small glasses. There is little to tempt the stranger in the way of native produce except the verblo&jyna, a cloth of camel's hair manufactured solely for the Crimean market; it is the material of which the bashiyks worn by ofiicers and men in the Russian army is made, and is well adapted for a shooting or travelling suit
Another sight is the gipsy settlement in the Tatar quarter, where degraded creatures in the scantiest clothing occupy the impurest of hovels; their little ones stray about in puris naturalibus, wallowing in the mire in sight of their shameless parents.
We were anxious to see the far-famed mud baths at Saky, and accordingly started off at daylight with a Ulutvyorka ' across a painfully level and unanimated steppe, completing the forty-three versts in three-and-a-half hours. The post-stations were principally in chaige of Jews, the Tatars and Russians we met on the road being few in rmmber. The nearer we approached the coast, the more naked did the country appear, Saky itself being surrounded by distressing desolation for a distance of two or three miles. Accommodation for fifty patients is provided at tlie medical estab-
' Four horses harnessed abreast.
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lishment, and when, in the months of June, July and August, the water on the shore evaporates and about a half verst of black greasy mud is laid bare, enclosures with dressing rooms are erected, to which the sufferers walk or are carried for their baths, in hollows in the mud that have been exposed to the burning sun, until the heat of 40° Reaumur is obtained; a marvellously effective remedy, it is said, for scrofulous affections, rheumatism, paralysis, liver complaints, Sec. a careful analysis has been lately published by Professor Hasshagen of Odessa.'
At a mile and a half to the south-east of Sympheripol, near the valley of the river Salghyr, is an eminence called by the Tatars Kermentchyck, ' little fort.' When in 1827 some ancient remains were being removed from its summit for building purposes in the city, the interesting discoveries were made which have led to the supposition that here had stood Neapolis, one of the fortresses mentioned by Strabo, as having been erected by Scylurus the Tauro-Scythian king. The antiquities found on that occasion are preserved in the museum of Odessa, and include a bas relief representing a Scythian on a horse \ a fragment of another bas-relief has the heads of a youth and of an aged man, and among the inscriptions is one which runs as follows; Boo-tXivi ^KikovfXK B<i«nXfar MeyaXof to A Eavrov BotriXftaf... 'The king Scylurus, the great king, the thirtieth (year) of his reign ' ' during subsequent excavations In 1850, were found the handles of amphorae marked with the name NmiroXt?.
Soon after leaving Kermentchyck, we dipped into the valley of the Salghyr, where the road bends between fertile orchards and soft meadows, the Tchadyr-dagh in front of us meriting its distinctive
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• Blararoberg, Trail /orttrtssa Taun-Scytitt, Sic. p. 9.
by Google appellation of ' tent mountain ' as seen in this direction, the two extremes of the tableland at the summit dropping abruptly to the north-east and south-west. A seven-mile drive brought us to a superb avenue of ancient poplars, which conducts to the pretty estate of Kylboiiroun ' at the foot of some hills, upon one of which are the remains of a Tatar fortress. Here I rejoined K., and this place, upon the invitation of the proprietor, we purposed making our head-quarters for a few days, in preference to the dusty town of Sympher6pol, a visit to the source of the Salghyr, to the Monastery of St. Cosmas and St. Damian, and the ascent of Teh ad yr-dagh, being in our programme."