The Tartars were rather rejoiced at the ruin of the place, for Count Petroffsky was no favourite with them, but they alwaj's express the greatest regard and affection for Prince Woronzoff. Baidar itself — a middling Tartar hamlet at the best of times — looks worse than ever now; garance dyed breeches were hanging out of the window-holes on all sides, and outside one very shaky, tumble-down wattle-house there was a board declaring that there was good eating and di-inking in the Cafe Pelissier. The village has one advantage, of which no Tartar village is ever destitute — a stream of clear water flows through it, and there are two or three fine springs close at hand. The people are miserable; the men are employed by the French as wood cutters and as drivers of arabas, but the money they receive is not sufficient to procure them full supplies of food or proper clothing.
From Baidar the road ascends by the mountain ridges to the Foross or Phoros Pass, and alibrds many delightful views of the great valley of Baidar, which is, as it were, a vast CUIMEA. wooded basin, surrounded by mountain and liill ranges covered with trees and sweeping right round it. Bhickbirds, tlarushes, nightingales, large and gaudily-coloured jays, wood-pigeons, doves, rock-pigeons, hawks, falcons, and great numbers of magpies, frequent the valley, and those which have good voices make it right musical towards sunset. Nightingales are veiy numerous, and so are varieties of -flycatchers, titmice, and buntings. In winter the hilLs are full of woodcock, the springs arc haunted by snipe, wild duck, widgeon, and teal; and the woods give shelter not only to roe-deer, but, if certain veracious reports promulgated this very winter are to be believed, to wolves and bears.
The road to Phoros is not good, and in winter must have been of little use. The summit of the pass at Phoros is surmounted by a stone arch which crosses the road at a place guarded on every side by walls of rock, hundi-eds of feet in height. There is a French guard here, and, of course, we had to exhibit, amid many excuses, our passes. That was but a little matter, but on entering the archway we iound it was fortified after the first rules of art; there were traverses and parapets of great height and thickness, and at the other side of the arch were similar obstacles. The mules were taken out of the cart; then it was unloaded, and the things carried one by one to the other side of these entrenchments: then the wheels were taken oif, and by the united strength of our whole party, aided by some goodnatured French soldiers, the cart itself was lifted up bodily and carried across all the gabions, earthworks, and traverses, and landed with a cheer on the narrow road at the other side of the pass.
The scene which bursts upon the eye on emerging from the arch is one of the finest I have ever witnessed — indeed, I am not sure that it is not the most beautiful and grand that I have ever seen. You find yourself standing in a very narrow road, on the left hand of which a sheer slab of rock rises to the height of 600 or 700 feet above you — its surface rent with fissui-es, here and there dotted hj stunted firs, which cling like weeds to its surface, diversified with all the tints for which volcanic rocks are remarkable. At the base of this cliff, which stretches furtlier than the sight can trace it, is a ragged fringe of mighty boulders, of fragments of mountains tossed down in the wildest confusion amid the straggling brushwood.
On your right, nearly 1,000 feet below you, is the sea, washing the narrow selvage of land which tumbles down from beneath your I'eet in waves of verdure, covered with thick irroves and dotted CRIMEAJT no ADS. 447 witli rocks, so rapidly that tlie dark blue waters, which are really nearly a mile distant, seem to be only a few hundi-ed yards from the road. This narrow shelving strip of land, formed of the debris of the mountain-chain above it, which lies beneath the clifi" and descends to the sea, extends along the coast from Phoros to Demur Kapu, or the Iron Gate, widening as it rims eastward, and losiuq; its distinctive character completely ere it reaches Aloushta, in consequence of the great wall of cliff 071 the left hand receding rapidly inland and northwards from the point opposite Yalta.