He lives like a patriarch surrounded by ten or a dozen children of all ages who enliven and embellish his solitude. Several little rooms communicating together by galleries form his dwelling. It is very humble, but the rabbi's remarkable physiognomy, and the Oriental costume of his wife and daughters, impart a charm even to so rude a tenement. He escorted us to the synagogue, a small building, long left to solitude. We saw, too, not without a lively interest, the grave of a khan's daughter, who, in the time of the Genoese rule, forsook the Koran for the law of the Christians, and died at the age of eighteen among those who had converted her. Like every thing else about it, it was in a state of neglect and decay.
All the lower part of the mountain, and also a deep narrow valley stretching eastward of Tchoufout Kaleh are covered with tombs, to which circumstance the situation owes its name of Valley of Jehoshaphat. Opposite the Karaite town is the celebrated convent of the Assumption, which is annually visited in the month of August by more than twenty thousand pilgrims. Its cells excavated in the rock have a very curious appearance from a distance. Some wooden flights of stairs on the outside of the rock lead to the several stages of this singular convent inhabited only by a few monks.
On our return to Bagtche Serai we noticed several crypts in the rock which are the haunt of a large number of Tsiganes. Nowhere does this vagrant people present a more disgusting aspect than in this locality. Their horrible infirmities, distorted limbs, and indescribable wretchedness make one almost doubt that they can belong to humanity.
We proceeded the next day to Simpheropol where we were to pass some days.
[68] Tchoufout Kaleh, formerly called Kirkov, was for a long series of years the residence of the khans, until Mengle Gherai quitted it for Bagtche Serai, in 1475.