When a person, after many years of hectic metropolitan life, full of worries, hopes and disappointments, decides to leave the noisy world and set off on a long journey through unknown countries, his heart involuntarily shrinks from secret forebodings. What does a traveler in distant lands look for? Does he hope to find oblivion of old misfortunes there, does he strive to come face to face with the pristine beauty of the world, or does he simply obey the invisible dictates of his fate?
Leaving Moscow for the south in the spring of 1836, I had no intention of writing a learned book or an instructive treatise. My only desire was to keep a sincere, truthful travel journal - to note everything that my eyes saw, that amazed my mind and touched my heart. Returning from distant travels and re-reading these leaflets, often written at postal stations, on the deck of a ship among the raging waves or under the shade of the cypress trees of the southern coast of Taurida, my friends convinced me to publish them. They rightly noted that the living voice of an observer who saw with his own eyes the revival of the southern steppes, the greatness of Cossack antiquity, the monuments of ancient Taurida and the vigorous activity of Odessa, will be of undoubted interest to society.
In submitting these notes to print, I was not looking for praise or literary fame. I wrote as I saw, thought and felt. If my diary brings the supportive reader several pleasant hours and allows him to more vividly imagine our beautiful Taurida, the fertile steppes of Ukraine and the blue Black Sea, I will consider myself completely rewarded for my labors.