At a short distance from Cape Khersonese begins that succession of ports which render this point of the Crimea so important to Russia; one of them is Sevastopol, whence the imperial fleet commands the whole of the Black Sea, and incessantly threatens the existence of the sultan's empire. Between Cape Khersonese and the Sevastopol roads which comprise three important ports, there are six distinct bays running inland parallel to each other. First come the Double Bay (Dvoinaia) and the Bay of the Cossack (Cozatchaia), between which the Heracleans founded their first establishment, no trace of which now exists. Then comes the Round Bay (Kruglaia), that of the Butts (Strelezkaia), and that of the Sands (Pestchannaia). These five are all abandoned, and are only used by vessels driven by stress of weather to seek shelter in them. It was in the space between the Bay of the Sands and that more to the west where the quarantine is established, that the celebrated Kherson once stood.
A little beyond the quarantine cove, the traveller discovers Sevastopol, situated on the slope of a hill between Artillery and South bays, the first two ports on the right hand as you enter the main roads. The position of the town thus built in an amphitheatre, renders its whole plan discernible at one view, and gives it a very grand appearance from a distance. Its barracks and stores, the extensive buildings of the admiralty, the numerous churches, and vast ship-building docks and yards, attest the importation of this town, the creation of which dates only from the arrival of the Russians in the Crimea. The interior, though not quite corresponding to the brilliant panorama it presents from a distance, is yet worthy of the great naval station. The streets are large, the houses handsome, and the population, in consequence of an imperial ukase which excludes the Jews from its territory, is much less repulsive than that of Odessa, Kherson, Iekaterinoslav, &c.
The port of Sevastopol is unquestionably one of the most remarkable in Europe. It owes all its excellence to nature, which has here, without the aid of art, provided a magnificent roadstead with ramifications, forming so many basins admirably adapted for the requirements of a naval station. The whole of this noble harbour may be seen at once from the upper part of the town. The great roadstead first attracts attention. It lies east and west, stretching seven kilometres (four miles and three-quarters) inland, with a mean breadth of 1000 yards, and serves as a station for all the active part of the fleet. It forms the medium of communication between Sevastopol and the interior of the peninsula. The northern shore presents only a line of cliffs of no interest, but on the southern shore the eye is detained by the fine basins formed there by nature. To the east, at the very foot of the hill on which the town stands, is South Bay, in length upwards of 3000 metres, and completely sheltered by high limestone cliffs. It is here the vessels are rigged and unrigged; and here, too, lies a long range of pontoons and vessels past service, some of which are converted into magazines, and others into lodgings for some thousand convicts who are employed in the works of the arsenal. Among these numerous veterans of a naval force that is almost always idle, the traveller beholds with astonishment the colossal ship, the Paris, formerly mounting 120 guns, and which was, down to 1829, the finest vessel in the imperial fleet.
Beyond South Bay, and communicating with it, is the little creek in which the government is constructing the most considerable works of the port, and has been engaged for many years in forming an immense dock with five distinct basins, capable of accommodating three ships of the line and two frigates, while simultaneously undergoing repairs. The original plan for this great work was devised by M. Raucourt, a French engineer, who estimated the total cost at about 6,000,000 rubles. The magnitude of this sum alarmed the government, but at the instance of Count Voronzof, they accepted the proposals of an English engineer, who asked only 2,500,000, and promised to complete the whole within five years. The work was begun on the 17th of June, 1832; but when we visited Sevastopol, some years after the first stone had been laid, the job was not half finished, and the expenses already exceeded 9,000,000 rubles. The execution of the basins seems, however, to be very far from corresponding to the enormous expenses they have already occasioned, and it is strange, indeed, that a weak and friable limestone should have been employed in hydraulic constructions of such importance. The angles of the walls, it is true, are of granite or porphyry, but this odd association of heterogeneous materials conveys, in itself, the severest condemnation of the mode of construction which has been adopted.