CHAPTER I.

THE CRIMEA.

General description of the Crimea—Mountains—Rivers—Ancient name—Boundaries—The Steppes to the north connected with it—The roads—Bereslaf—Kherson; its foundation and importance—Gloubóky—Perversion of names by the Russians—Nicolaief, head-quarters of Black Sea fleet, described—Odessa—Definition of New Russia—Limits of ancient Scythia—The dominions of the Khans of the Crimea—The Zaporogue Cossacks.

The peninsula of the Crimea is a southern portion of the Steppes of Russia, raised by volcanic action out of nearly the centre of the Black Sea. It is about 200 miles across in a direct line from Cape Karamroún on the western side above Eupatoria to Cape Fanar, the furthest point eastward on the Straits of Kertch, and 125 miles from Perecop to Cape Kíkineis on the southern coast. It contains a population of about 200,000 inhabitants, and covers an area of 10,050 English square miles.

The Tauric range of mountains runs east and west along the southern coast from Balaclava to Theodosia, and generally within a few hundred yards of the shore, which, being protected by them from the northern winds, enjoys a delicious climate, like that of southern Italy. But this mild temperature is confined to the narrow strip of land along the coast which is shut in by the mountains, and to the north of them the weather shows severe alternations of heat and cold, and the snow in some seasons covers the ground for a considerable time in winter. The mountains themselves occupy a large space, and rise to a height of from 1000 to 5000 feet. They are generally flat-topped or dome-shaped, and hold within their range high elevated plains called Yailas. Their summits reveal granite and other primitive rocks, and on their northern sides lie, like a mantle, the Steppes, which constitute all the northern portion, and nearly two-thirds of the area, of the whole peninsula.

These steppes gradually incline downwards towards the north, and hence received from the later Greeks the name of “ta climata,” or the inclines.[8] The following are the principal rivers:—Eastward, the Salghír, the Bulganak, the three Andols, the Tchoroksou, the Soubashi, and the Karagos, which flow into the Shiváshe or great lagoon on the east, improperly called the Putrid Sea; and on the westward, the western Bulganak, the Alma, the Katcha, and the Belbek, which discharge their waters into the long open bay at the head of which stands Eupatoria.

The peninsula of the Crimea was known to the Greeks under the name of the Taurica Chersonesus, and in the middle ages was called Gothia. It is now called either the Tauride (a version of its first appellation), or more commonly Crimea, from the famous city of Eski Krim, near Theodosia, which was built by the Tatars in the thirteenth century, and is now a ruin.

The Crimea is joined to the main land by the narrow isthmus of Perecop, on each side of which there is a very shallow sea. To the north of it the dreary plains of Russia extend interminably, on the west to Bessarabia and the Ukraine, and on the east to Tatary and Siberia. There has in all times been a connexion between the Steppes to the north of Perecop and the peninsula of the Crimea itself, and they have both generally been in the possession of the same people. A portion of the Steppes, bounded by Bereslaf, Alexandropol, and Mariopol, are now included in the Russian government of the Tauride. As the character of the Steppes is very peculiar, and they form, as I have said, about two-thirds even of the whole peninsula of the Crimea, I have thrown together in the next chapter some general observations upon them.

I will now say a few words about the road between Perecop and Odessa, and the principal towns through which it passes. The whole distance is 352 miles,[9] and there are post-horses along the road, which runs entirely through the Steppes. Road, however, properly speaking, there is none; for even outside the gates of Odessa the traveller follows the track of those that have preceded him, and in dry weather bowls rapidly along, but is arrested by the slightest fall of rain. I left Odessa, in the year 1843, in the commencement of August, in a light britska drawn by three horses, and in consequence of a slight shower of rain in the morning I was stopped half-way in the rich loam of the Steppes, and was obliged to pass the night there, and send on to the next station for three fresh horses to pull my carriage through the heavy ground.

The road from Perecop to Bereslaf, on the banks of the Dniepr, runs 52½ miles across a perfectly flat country, where the soil is not fertile. The latter town is situated on the right bank of the Dniepr, which is precipitous and very much higher than the left bank, which is shelving, and this peculiarity is found in all the rivers of the south of Russia.

Bereslaf owes its importance to its situation at a point where the Dniepr is crossed by a wooden bridge. In the Greek period it was called Miletopol, and in later times it belonged to the Zaporogue Cossacks till their conquest by the Russians.[10]

From Bereslaf to Kherson is 47 miles, and the road runs along the bank of the Dniepr. The town of Kherson is the capital of the government of the same name, which is bounded by the governments of the Tauride, Ekaterinoslaf, Kief, and Podolia, touching also at some points on Moldavia, Bessarabia, and the Black Sea. The north and north-west parts of the government of Kherson are very fertile, and produce great quantities of wheat; although the soil becomes dry and sandy on approaching the Black Sea. Before its conquest by the Russians this was the country of the Nogai Tatars, who were also called Precopian Tatars, but none of their tribes now remain to the westward of the Dniepr. The population of the government of Kherson now amounts to between 300,000 and 400,000, and is composed of Russians, Armenians, Jews, Germans, and Bulgarians. The town of Kherson is situated on the north bank of the Dniepr,[11] which here spreads out into a wide kind of lagoon, 11 miles in breadth. This is filled with low islands, which are often covered with water, and render the passage difficult and dangerous. The town was founded in the desert in 1778, by Catherine II., and was the first commercial port which the Russians established on the Black Sea. This was four years after the Treaty of Kainardji, by which the Black Sea was opened for the first time to any European nation, after having been shut up for 300 years, since the conquest of Constantinople.[12]

Kherson is situated at about 50 miles from the sea, and the water is too shallow to allow large vessels to approach it. These load and discharge their cargoes at Gloubóky, which is many miles below Kherson and the mouths of the Dniepr. Kherson continued to increase till the foundation of Odessa, eighteen years afterwards, in 1796. It was both the commercial and naval centre of the Russians when they first reached the Black Sea in their conquests; but, as the commercial affairs were transplanted to Odessa, so their naval arsenal, with the admiralty and the dockyards, were removed to Nicolaief a few years earlier.[13] The name of Kherson was given to the new town because it was erroneously supposed to stand on the site of the ancient Greek colony of that name, the ruins of which are to be seen close to Sevastopol, and similar mistakes are common in the case of many other Russian towns founded about the same time. Thus Sevastopol itself bears the name of the old Greek city on the shores of Abkhazia; the ruins of the real Eupatoria are at a long distance from the place which now bears its name; and nothing but a Tatar village of the name of Hadjibey ever stood on those steppes where Odessa is supposed to renew the memory of the ancient Odessus.

Nicolaief is the only town of the slightest importance on the dreary road from Kherson to Odessa, and is 40 miles from the former, and 77 miles from the latter place.[14] It stands in the open Steppe, at the confluence of the Boug and the Ingoul, on the left bank of the former river, and 22 miles from its mouth. The Boug is here a noble stream, a mile and a half broad,[15] and so deep that the largest men-of-war can ascend and descend after taking out their guns. Its right bank is deep and precipitous, and the left bank low and shelving, a peculiarity, as I have before remarked, of all the rivers of Southern Russia. This was likewise found to be the case at the Alma. This town was founded in 1791, and intended to replace Kherson as the head-quarters of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea. It is simply a naval arsenal, and contains a population of 10,000 or 12,000 persons, entirely occupied in the government establishments. There are here immense storehouses and dockyards, in which all the Russian fleet in the Black Sea is built.[16] The timber for ship-building comes chiefly down the Dniepr to Kherson, and from thence to Nicolaief. All the vessels constructed here are transported empty down the river to Gloubóky or Otchákow, and proceed from thence to the Black Sea on wooden frames called camels, because of a sandbank near Kilboroún, and they take in their cannon and tackle at Sevastopol. The town is quite undefended except by a wall, which has been built not for military but police purposes, to prevent peculation and smuggling, by allowing no ingress or egress without permission. There is no good water[17] at Nicolaief, as that of the rivers is often brackish, as is also that which is obtained from wells, but an excellent spring has been found at some distance from the town, the water of which has now been introduced and fills a large reservoir, which holds a sufficient quantity for a much larger population than now inhabits Nicolaief.[18]

From Nicolaief to Odessa the country is very desert and uncultivated; for the old Tatar population has disappeared, and new settlers have not arrived in sufficient numbers to occupy their place. It is only at the last stage from Odessa that the country bears at all the aspect of civilization.

Odessa, situated on a barren Steppe, is the second commercial port in the Russian empire. It was the last town founded by the Empress Catherine II. in 1796, a few months before her death; and although its situation is not the best that could have been chosen, still its position as a débouché for the Polish provinces, and its privileges as a free port, have made it rapidly increase up to the present time. Odessa is the residence of the Governor-General of New Russia, and the real capital of all Southern Russia—that is to say, the largest money centre, and the town to which all look up as the richest and most refined in the empire after Petersburg and Moscow. New Russia comprehends the governments of Kherson, Ekaterinoslaf, and the Tauride, or the vast territory which has been conquered from nomade nations within the last century, and is as yet thinly peopled with fixed inhabitants. All these countries have the same interests, and require special attention, and for these reasons the governors of them do not correspond with the ministers at Petersburg, as is the case with the other governments of the Russian empire, but are referred to the Governor-General of New Russia,[19] who resides among them at Odessa, and can naturally pay a more immediate attention to their wants than distant ministers.

New Russia, as the name denotes, has been recently acquired. This country, with Bessarabia, nearly agrees with the limits of ancient Scythia in the time of Herodotus, who describes it as extending from the Ister (Danube) to the Tanais (Don), and as being watered by eight rivers, of which the Tanais was the last. Scythia, then, appears to have been bounded by the Danube on the south-west. To the north the whole of the Boug ran through Scythia; and beyond the Don, to the east, the Scythian population ended, and the Sauromatæ occupied the Steppes between the Caspian and Black Sea. The latter people are supposed by some to be the same as the Sarmatæ, or Sarmatians, the ancestors of the Poles. The southern part of Scythia, between Kherson and Perecop, was inhabited by a fixed population, called the Agricultural Scythians; and the Royal Scythians were to the east, near the Don; and the Nomade Scythians along the whole country to the north. From the third to the sixth century, when the barbarians pressed forwards to occupy the defenceless provinces of the Roman empire, these plains were the high road of nations, and were occupied by a succession of nomade peoples during the whole period of the Byzantine empire, until they fell into the hands of the Tatars and the Ukraine Cossacks, called Zaporogues, from whom the Russians conquered them in the latter half of the last century. Several Nogai Tatar tribes regularly divided the whole of the southern portion of it, from the Dniestr to the Don, and all were under the dominion of the Khan of the Crimea, and constituted the largest portion of his territory. At the end of the seventeenth century these Tatars were known in Europe by the name of the Precopian Tatars, or the Tatars of Perecop.[20]

The nearest regular nations to these on the north were the Poles and the Russians, of which the Poles were three centuries ago the more important and powerful people; but both were then much smaller nations and occupied far less territory than they now do. Between them and the Tatars there was an immense tract of waste land called the Ukraine, which in Russian means the march, or border land. Upon this a fugitive population of all sorts settled themselves, and took as their head-quarters the rapids of the Dniepr, where that river for about 70 miles falls over a succession of vast granite blocks, which impede the navigation of the river, and have caused the formation of numerous islands, difficult of access. From this cause the mixed population who took refuge there were called Zaporogues, or the people who lived at the falls, from two Russian words, “za,” at, “porohi,” the falls; and they were also called Cossacks, or Kazaks, as the word is pronounced in Russian and Tatar. This is an appellation of uncertain origin, and known over a vast extent of country on the confines of Europe and Asia. The Zaporogues were called Kazak, and so were the people who lived on the Don, and these two communities were of decided Russian origin. This name was also well known among Asiatic nations, for the Tcherkess in early times were called Kazaks, and Wood found it in use as far as the banks of the Oxus. It is not considered as a complimentary term, and the Cossacks of the Don call themselves the Donskoi, or the people of the Don, and consider the other as a reproach.

The Zaporogue Cossacks then inhabited the march between the Tatars and the Poles and Russians, and thus resembled the border people of England and Scotland. In the reign of Sigismund I., King of Poland, the last of the race of Jagellon, who died in 1572, the Cossacks were first taken into pay and armed against the Tatars, and a Polish officer was appointed their governor; and in the reign of Stephen Batory, which began three years after the death of Sigismund, they were regularly brought under military discipline. Much that is fabulous has been related of this people, and they have been described as a nation who admitted no women to live among them, as the Amazons near the Sea of Azof banished all men; and imagination had embellished their history as early as the seventeenth century.[21] “They were, however,” says Chevalier, who wrote a history of the Cossack war, which was published at Paris in 1663, “only a military body, and not a nation, as some have imagined. We cannot compare them better than to the Franc archers established in France by Charles VII. They made periodical naval expeditions against the Turks, and have even advanced within two leagues of Constantinople. Their rendezvous was the islands of the Dniepr, and when winter approached they returned to their homes. They generally mustered 5000 or 6000 men: their boats were sixty feet long, with ten or twelve oars on each side, but this must be understood only of their war-boats.”

In short, they were pirates after the manner of our forefathers, the Jutes, Angles, Saxons, and Danes.

The father of John Sobieski commanded the Cossacks, and gives the following account of them:—

“They are chiefly of Russian origin, though many criminal refugees from Poland, Germany, and other countries are to be found among them. They profess the religion of the Greek Church; and have their fixed residence in their naturally fortified places, watered by the Dniepr. Their business is war, and when they are shut up, as it were, in their nest,[22] they consider it illegal to neglect athletic sports for any other pursuits. They live sparingly by hunting and fishing, and they support their wives and families by plunder. They are governed by a prefect, whose sceptre is a reed, and who is chosen in a tumultuous manner. He has absolute power of life and death, and has four counsellors to assist him. The Poles have given them the town of Trychtymirow in Kiovia. Long habit has fitted them for maritime warfare. They use boats, in the side of which they can occasionally fasten flat bundles of reeds to buoy them up and resist the violence of the waves and winds. With these boats they sail with great rapidity, and very often take the laden Turkish vessels. Not many of them use lances (framlis), but they are all furnished with arquebuses (sclopetis); and in this kind of warfare the kings of Poland can match the infantry of all the monarchs of the world. They fortify their camp with waggons ranged in several rows; this they call ‘tabor,’ and make them their last refuge from an overbearing enemy. The Poles were obliged to furnish them with arms, provisions, and forage for their horses.”

Such were the men whom Batory enlisted in the Polish service. In the year 1556 he divided them into six regiments, and appointed superior and subordinate officers over them. They were then only infantry, says Chevalier, but Batory joined to them 2000 horse, and in a short time they consisted chiefly of cavalry. Their chief was called the hetman, or ataman; and the king presented him with a flag, a horse-tail, a staff, and a mirror, as ensigns of authority.[23] The Cossacks played an important part in all the wars that desolated these countries till they were subdued, in the last century, by Catherine II., and transplanted to the banks of the Kuban to keep in check the Circassians. They then lost the name of Zaporogues, and took that of Tchernomorski[24] Cossacks, or Cossacks of the Black Sea, under which they are now fighting in the Russian armies before Sevastopol.

The authority of the khans of Crimea[25] extended beyond Odessa to the Dniestr,[26] which was in former times the limits of Moldavia, whose prince paid them tribute. To the north the Tatars were separated from the kingdom of Poland by the country of the Ukraine; and the Zaporogue Cossacks were organized by the Polish monarchs as a kind of military colonists to check their depredations. The Tatar sway was also extended along all the Steppes as far as the Don Cossacks, and then again beyond them to Circassia, and the power of the khans of Crimea long survived that of their brethren in Great Tatary. But when once the Russian people had begun to shake off their shameful servitude to the Tatars, which it is doubtful whether any other European nation placed in their position could have avoided, each generation saw them increase in power, till they had conquered Zaporogues, Poles, Don Cossacks, and Tatars, and turned these nations into obedient subjects and instruments for the further extension of their enormous empire.