CHAPTER IX.

INKERMAN, MANGOUP, AND THE HILLY COUNTRY OF THE CRIMEA.

The Bay of Sevastopol to Inkerman—Aktiar—Inkerman Castle—Its history—Crypts—Fuller’s earth, or natural soap—Tchorgouna—Tchouli, residence of Pallas—Crypts at Karakoba—Mount Aithodor—Mangoup—Description and history—Gothic architecture—Position of Mangoup—Interesting character of surrounding country—The Tchatyr Dagh and the Yailas.

From Sevastopol to Inkerman the road by land is either very long or very fatiguing.[122] In order to avoid the numberless ravines which cut up the Chersonese, a circuitous route must be taken, and it is hardly possible to attempt to cross in a straight line. Scarcely has the descent been made to the bottom of one ravine by a very steep declivity, than an equally precipitous ascent must be made at the other side; and neither the one nor the other of these routes has anything picturesque or interesting, except some poor ruins scattered here and there among the rocks. Nothing was desert here in the time of ancient Kherson. A laborious population, sacrificing pleasure in the noble object of possessing a little corner of ground, then occupied the sides of all the ravines, and living half in the grottoes, and half in miserable huts of stone and earth, devoted themselves to the cultivation of a precious and tolerably fertile soil, by raising terraces of earth, on which they planted vines and fruit-trees. Neither the north wind nor the piercing frost could penetrate these well-protected and sheltered spots; but during the heats of summer they must have been hardly supportable, unless some covered shelter was made on one side or the other under the rock. Although the land journey from Sevastopol to Inkerman be so difficult in times of peace, nothing used to be more interesting than the sea voyage, which might be performed by hiring a little boat at Sevastopol, and leisurely sailing or rowing down the Great Bay. It is not that the country is very attractive in itself by shady groves and country houses: on the contrary, these are rare on the shores of this bay, which are rather severe in aspect, from the abrupt forms and nakedness of the rocks. It is the bay itself, piercing nearly five miles into the land, which invests the scene with all its magnificence.

As to the geology of the coasts of the bay, beginning at the entrance from the sea, the low shores are formed by beds of the recent tertiary volcanic formation, very much thrown out of their place. These beds gradually rise higher up the sides as far as the Careening Bay, and there appear under them brilliant beds of white clay, with layers of small stones and cinders, and land and lake mollusques. This formation is of considerable extent, and presents high cliffs of so dazzling a white colour, that they have generally been taken for chalk.

Under the clay, and near the extremity of the bay, appears in its turn, in thick even layers, the nummulite limestone, rich in fossils, raised on the back of a new formation, that of the chalk, which has a great development, and of which the high walls, principally composed of green sandstone or chlorited chalk, encase the bottom of the bay, opening a large entrance at its farthest extremity for the Bouiouk Oozoun river, or the Tchornaya Retchka of the Russians, which is lost in a marsh before it mixes with the salt waves of the bay. Close to the Careening Bay are the first crypts cut in the rocks, and the principal ones, the entrance to which is very little raised above the level of the bay, are large, of a regular square shape, and cut in the front of the rock. On the northern shore, opposite the crypts, in a little valley, are the ruins of the village of Aktiar, which replaced Kherson, giving its name to the bay. This served as the first establishment of the Russians after the conquest of the Crimea. Here is the summer habitation and the garden of the admiral-commandant of Sevastopol, and here are the storehouses and bakehouses of the fleet, a large hospital, now abandoned, and an ancient hermitage cut in the rock, painted with frescoes.

The extremity of the bay in ancient times was richly cultivated, but the sea has now been driven back by the unwholesome marshes of the Tchornaya Retchka, and high reeds stop the course of all vessels by their inextricable labyrinths. With the exception of a powder-magazine and a few sheds, these ravines are naked and uninhabited, and the villages which crowned the summits of the cliffs and extended on the plateau of the northern part of the Chersonese, where the second division of the British army is now encamped and the famous two-gun battery was erected, have disappeared.

The ruins of the villages cover a space of two miles, and end with the great rock in which is cut the first of the crypt churches of Inkerman. These were all defended by walls from the Steppe, one of which is still seen, four feet in thickness. The direct road from Kherson to Inkerman passed by these villages, and a very steep road led from the plateau to the bottom of the ravine, where there is the church. The greater part of these remains of antiquity have disappeared before the labours of the engineers, who have blown up the rocks with the crypts in them to obtain the soft but beautiful building-stone for the construction of the magnificent aqueduct which carries the water of the Tchornaya Retchka to the docks of Sevastopol.

The aqueduct is carried on 10 arches, and measures 200 feet in length; the piles on which it is built are 18 feet deep, as this is the only depth at which a firm foundation could be found. After it leaves the aqueduct the water is carried by a tunnel 800 feet in length. The canal is 4 feet deep and 9 feet broad, and the gallery through which it is carried is 6 feet high to the top of the vault, and 12 feet wide.

From this place the road continues to Inkerman,[123] which is the modern name of the promontory rising at the end of the Bay of Sevastopol on its northern shore, and looking down upon the marshes of the Tchornaya Retchka. The rock is pierced all over with the subterranean dwellings of the ancient Tauri, and on the top are the ruins of the castle built by Diophantes, the general of Mithridates, who was sent to help the Khersonians against the Tauro-Scythians, a little before the birth of Christ. This castle was called Eupatorion, a name which, like many others, has been misapplied by the Russians, and given to the town of Koslof.

From the castle, Diophantes made a communication with the other side, by filling up the valley with earth, and leaving a passage for the river by a bridge with three arches, of which one remained in 1834, and the bank itself is perfectly preserved. This was the bridge that was broken down by Liprandi after the battle of Inkerman, when he retired to the northern side of the Tchornaya Retchka, and by this act acknowledged that he had been defeated. In the rocks near are seen the enormous quarries for the building-stone, which in all times has been celebrated. Near here, and cut in the solid rock of the promontory of Inkerman, is a regularly constructed Greek church, with all its parts complete, and on the top of the rock in which it is cut is the fortress of Diophantes, which in the middle ages was called Theodori, and was the residence of some Greek princes dependent on Constantinople. One of them, called Alexis, took Balaclava from the Genoese, and was again driven out of it in A.D. 1434.

In 1475 this little Greek principality suffered the same fate as the Gothic duchy of Mangoup; and the castle was taken by the Turks, who placed a garrison here, and allowed the fortress to go to ruin. In the time of Bronovius (A.D. 1578) Greek inscriptions and heraldic bearings were to be seen over the gates and public buildings, but they have now entirely disappeared.

The crypts made by the ancient Tauri are on the south side of the rock, which was generally the situation they chose; and from the interior of the fortress there is a path leading down to numberless rows of them, in six or seven tiers, one above another. The simplest of these crypts have only one room, a part of which was raised one foot high, and two feet broad for a bed; and the holes may still be seen in front of the kind of niche in which it was placed, to which a curtain was probably attached.

The more complicated crypts have many rooms, and all of these, except the principal chamber, have beds. The doors were of wood; the ceilings rise to a point; and in the centre of the floor there was a hole one foot and a half deep, and two feet across, which was the fireplace and the oven, such as is found in the crypts of Georgia, and is still used in that country to the present day.

The crypts were innumerable, but are now rapidly diminishing. In some places, from natural causes, the rock has given way, and carried down whole stages of crypts, with the passages and staircases of communication between the various stories; and Lieutenant Kruse, who had a contract for stone for the public buildings of Sevastopol, blew up vast numbers.

As the valley of Inkerman is now extremely unhealthy, it may be asked how it could ever have been so thickly populated as the remains would indicate; but its unhealthiness is caused by the stagnant marshes of the Tchornaya Retchka, which in ancient times were flourishing gardens, from which all superfluous water was drained off.[124]

The same layers of green sandstone, which form one of the sides of the gorge of Inkerman, then take a more eastern direction; and here, facing the south, the strata are so full of subterranean dwellings that they might almost be called beds of crypts.

Immediately below the second group of crypts further on, in the direction of Tchorgouna and Mangoup, is a layer of fuller’s earth, two feet in thickness, and of a grey colour, accompanied below by talk. This is used as fossil soap, and is exported to Constantinople, where it is known in the baths under the name of Keffe Kil, or clay of Caffa.[125] There is a similar deposit at Sabli, and on one of the banks of the Alma the greenish talkous fuller’s earth is mixed with silicious pebbles and broken ammonites, while on the other bank may be extracted from wells the best fuller’s earth in the Crimea. This same bed, again, appears at the foot of Mount Akhaia, near Karasóubazar, on the western side of the peninsula. Below these beds are totally different deposits. At Inkerman is a white or grey clay, more or less schistous, almost entirely without fossils, and several hundred feet thick. Its rounded forms start from the foot of the wall of green sandstone, cover a part of the valley of Balaclava, and advance as far as Tchorgouna. Tchorgouna lies in a gorge formed nearly of the same pudding-stones and marbles as those at Balaclava.

The Tchornaya Retchka, coming from the valley of Baidar, here unites its two principal branches, which escape from wild chasms in the Jurassic rocks. Before forcing itself between the two last rocks of marble, which almost stop it, and just as it reaches the chalk valley of Balaclava, where it is diverted for the docks of Sevastopol, it receives the rivulet of Tchouli, which has quite a different course, and which takes its name from the village of Tchouli, the residence of the famous traveller Pallas. This little river may be followed up in a north-eastward direction to Mangoup, and presents the curious phenomenon of running exactly between the Jurassic and cretaceous formations. The stream divides these two formations, the former of which gives its picturesque beauty to the southern coast of the Crimea, while the latter is synonymous with the dull level of the Steppe; so that on its right is seen the Jura, with its characteristic rounded calcareous domes, well wooded, and cut into valleys, and on the other side the chalk presents its high crests and jutting buttresses, covered with a meagre vegetation, and surmounted by an enormous naked wall of green sandstone, prolonged without interruption to Mount Aithodor, which only wants a sea below it to become the most picturesque of promontories. Here there is a group of crypts like those at Inkerman, called Karakoba (the Black Grotto), and the high promontory which rises above Aithodor is called Elli Boroun (the Cape of Tempests). This high advanced rock, crowned with a few marine or littoral pines, forms a side of one of the great chasms that have been opened in the chalk; and it can hardly have been by the agency of any river, as none of the larger streams of the Tauric chain have condescended to take advantage of its opening to pass through it, so that there is only a very small current of water which runs into the Belbek. In the midst of this chasm stands an immense rock, perpendicular on all sides, and rising like the isolated pier of some gigantic bridge, and this bears on its summit the celebrated fortress of Mangoup.

No position in the Crimea could be stronger, and none has been more celebrated. Mangoup commanded one of the gates of the Steppe, and as a wall was built across the valley of Inkerman, so it seems that this entrance was also closed in by two walls, separated by an interval of fifty feet, and of which there are well-preserved traces in the valley that leads from Koráles to Aithodor.

The rock of Mangoup rises to upwards of a thousand feet, and every accessible place in its vicinity is fortified with walls and towers. One valley, called the Tabana Déréh (Tatar for the Valley of the Tannery), is fortified by a wall and four towers, and contains several stages of crypts and a fine spring of water. It was inhabited up to 1800 by some Karaim Jews, who were tanners, and when they quitted, no living being was left in the deserted town of Mangoup.[126]

On mounting the plateau from the valley, there are the remains of a Byzantine Greek church, with frescoes, and surrounded by tombs like those at Laspi on the southern coast. To the left of the church is a mosque and a Turkish cemetery, and beyond it is another valley, closed like the other by a wall, with a door in the middle. The view from hence is magnificent, and extends over Sevastopol to the sea. In the acropolis of Mangoup there are the remains of a fine palace, of two stories high, resting on a terrace, with a handsome flight of steps. On the first floor of this palace there are placed, in symmetrical order, and richly decorated, four windows: three bead ornaments surrounded the two in the middle, which terminated in a flat arch: those at the end were richly charged with ornaments, and of larger dimensions. The workmanship of the arabesques, and of the roses, the fillets, and the wreaths, are in the Eastern style, very like that of Armenia. There is some resemblance to the style of Turkey, but, besides being less regular and symmetrical, it cannot be supposed that the Turkish conquerors, who took Mangoup in 1475, and then abandoned it to a few soldiers, would ever have erected such edifices. Bronovius proves the contrary; he says, “Eighteen years after it was taken by the Turks, as the Christian Greeks relate, Mangoup was almost utterly destroyed by a horrible and sudden fire. Nothing of importance was saved except the Acropolis, in which there was a fine gateway, ornamented with marble, with Greek inscriptions, and a high palace in stone. It was in this house that the khans, in their barbarian fury, have several times shut up the Muscovite ambassadors, and made them suffer a severe captivity.” The door and the palace, which have been described, evidently date before the fire, and consequently before its capture by the Turks. It is a memento of the Gothic Dukes of Mangoup; and the Armenian style that predominates may be explained by the fact that, in the middle of the fourteenth century, a number of Armenians had quitted their country, in terror at the great earthquake of Anni, and had filled the Crimea with their colonies. As perhaps a solitary memorial of the architecture of the Goths in the Crimea, this palace possesses considerable interest.

If the reader will now look at the map, he will see that at Mangoup we are about one-third of the distance from Sevastopol to Baktchéserai, and on the confines of the two formations that cause Steppes to the north and a romantic scenery to the south. A tributary of the Belbek leads down a wild valley from Mangoup to Koráles, which I have already noticed as the residence of the beautiful Tatar princess, Adel Bey; and a little to the west of Koráles is Tcherkess Kerman, or the fortress of the Tcherkess, and Tcherkess Tus, the plain of the Tcherkess, and the river Kabarda, which mark the spot where a colony of that noble and chivalrous people, whom we call the Circassians, dwelt for several centuries, and beyond this plain the high road is seen running to Sevastopol along the open Steppe. There is, therefore, little to interest the traveller to the north; but let him go east, south, and west of Mangoup, and he may make endless excursions in a most lovely country. He may wander up the valleys of the Belbek, the Katcha, and the Alma, and cross the mountainous country which divides their channels; and whether he be geologist, archæologist, or only an admirer of the beauties of nature, he will find his tastes amply gratified, and every simple want supplied among the primitive and hospitable Tatars.

The geologist may admire and unravel the intricate system where endless strata have been forced up and bent, especially in the Heracleotic Chersonese, into the most fantastic forms, while jets of igneous rocks may be traced, giving the key to the wild confusion that reigns around.

The archæologist will find in every hill top, and in every rock and valley, traces of the many nations that have inhabited the Crimea, from the rude crypts of the savage Tauri, to the graceful fragments of the Grecian column; and the traveller, who wanders simply to enjoy his physical existence, will ever find health and strength in a delicious climate, and the purest enjoyment of the senses in its exquisite rural beauty. Endless flocks and herds browze along the valleys, while near the fresh high plains, raised up in the bosom of the mountains by stupendous volcanic agency, Tatar villages are snugly situated in sheltered spots, surrounded by orchards, which supply even Petersburg with fruit, and where the vine has flourished from the earliest ages. Added to all these charms, the sea is always near, and its glorious expanse is seen from every mountain-top, and that coast can at all times be readily visited, which tempted the beauty-loving Greeks to found here some of their earliest and most flourishing colonies.

The Ai Petri, Mount Babougan (4500 feet), and the Tchatyr Dagh (5125 feet), the highest mountains in the Crimea, are seen from all parts, and from the summit of the latter there is a very beautiful view. All around it, in the country within the influence of the Tauric chain of mountains, is a succession of verdant hills and valleys, which seem, as Dubois says, to be a great island, surrounded by two oceans, that of the sea on the south, and of the Steppes on the north, so flat and uniform do the latter appear to be. Tchatyr Dagh means tent-mountain in Tatar, and this name has been given to it because of its form, the last 700 feet of which rise like a large oblong tent, which in ancient times procured it the name of Mount Trapezus. There are, all along the Tauric chain, elevated plains, called in Tatar, Yailas, such as are also found in the range of the Caucasus, covered in both countries with excellent herbage, on which, in summer, large flocks of sheep and goats are pastured.[127]