STEPPE CULTIVATION.

201

It is difficult to account for this decay of a race, in a rich country absolutely lying waste for want of labour. Undoubtedly the colonisation of a territory by a civilised and industrious people has invariably led to the decrease and ultimate extermination of the original owners of the soil, where there has not been room for the two races to exist contemporaneously; but this can hardly be said to be the case in the Crimea. The barbarous Sclaves could scarcely boast a greater degree of refinement than the Tartar tribe whose country they became possessed of; while there remains still ample room for double their united population to live in plenty. The want of water is an evil only consequent upon the want of enterprise and labour sufficient to irrigate a soil which has proved itself second to none in Europe, since the buckwheat of Kertch carried off the prize at the Great Exhibition in London; nor can justice ever be done to the Crimea while the obstacles are even greater to foreigners holding land than to Russians immigrating for the purpose of tilling it. By a recent ukase, no foreigner is allowed to hold one rood of land without becoming naturalised a Russian subject-a penalty for which, in the present state of things, nothing could compensate but a most certain and magnificent remuneration.

Kertch contains a population of ten thousand inhabitants, exporting only a little salt to some of the Russian ports. It is destitute, at present, of all in

202

A TARTAR CONVEYANCE.

trinsic resources, and owes its prosperity to a policy which has ruined Theodosia, and immeasurably retarded commerce upon the Sea of Azov.

Our former experience of posting had been sufficiently disagreeable to determine us to avoid it for the future if possible, and so we engaged an exceedingly apathetic-looking Tartar to convey us to Simpheropol, a distance of one hundred and thirty miles, in two days, with his own vehicle and horses. Accordingly, towards evening, a long green conveyance, very much resembling a carrier's cart, appeared at the door, drawn by three diminutive rats of ponies. It was

so perfectly full of straw as to appear not intended for the reception of anything else. However, we found that, after our luggage was stowed away, a remarkably comfortable bed remained for ourselves; and I was soon snugly buried in the straw, insensible alike to fleas and jolting, which my fellow-traveller told me in the morning had both been very trying. We soon found that, however eccentric might have been the appearance of our nags, they were none the less high-mettled. Our way lay over nothing but steppe, in no respect differing from the

country of the Don Cossacks, except in being less undulating.

Here, at the different post-stations, the bluff Cossack was either exchanged for the indolent Tartar, or we were left without postmaster, and consequently without somovar at all. We found, to our consternation, that this was the case in a village that externally promised great things, having just accomplished seventy-five miles in a little more than twenty hours, and beginning to feel that a substantial meal had become necessary. The house which should have been devoted to the entertainment of man and beast, consisted of but two rooms, and was converted into a store for Indian corn, to insure the safety of which doors and windows had been carefully barred. The Tartar wisely carried his own and his horse's food with him. He had breakfasted off a huge watermelon and a hunch of black bread, and he was now dining off precisely similar fare. After our experience of this fruit, it was frightful to contemplate him thus engaged.

Fortunately we observed a respectable-looking mansion, and, boldly invading it, met with a cordial reception from the owner, who was evidently the squire of the place, but who was totally at a loss to divine who we were or what we wanted, until a little wizened old Frenchman suddenly appeared, and bowed himself into the office of interpreter. His success in that capacity was soon manifest, for our host vanished, and shortly afterwards a steaming somovar

204

AN AMUSING INTERPRETER.

made its appearance, together with a bottle of excellent Crim wine and some delicious fruit, upon which, with the addition of our own stores, we made a satisfactory repast, while the little Frenchman enlivened us with his account of a visit he had made to England with Talleyrand (probably as his valet), and plied us with incessant questions as to the prospects of Louis Napoleon, and the present state of Paris, which he had not seen for thirty years. Poor old man, he was in utter ignorance of what was going on in the rest of the world, except in as far as the little Odessa newspaper supplied him with information. His present position was that of tutor to the sons of our host. That worthy individual soon after came back to us, accompanied by two unruly boys-we had observed his wife looking through a chink in the door at the unusual visitors-and commenced a conversation by an abrupt inquiry if shares in an English railway were purchased from a private company or from the crown. Upon this a discussion ensued as to our mode of managing such matters, which was somewhat confused, from the fact of our interpreter often mixing up admonitions to his pupils with the description he was giving us of a proposed line of railway from Moscow to Theodosia, which he delivered in some such fragmentary way as this: "Monsieur says, in answer to your question-why do you keep opening and shutting the door in that way, Ivan ?-that the principal article is salt, for the conveyance of which from the Crimea into the inte

A RAILWAY TO THEODOSIA.

205

rior of Russia this line would be employed-you are not the concierge,-but Prince Woronzoff has given it his decided opposition. He maintains that such a line would ruin Kertch, which is a far more important consideration than the welfare of the country at large-don't titter and grin, Alexis, I have said nothing for any one to laugh at,therefore there is no chance of a proposal for this railroad being favourably regarded by government."

Our host was evidently deeply interested in this scheme. He owned large salt-pans in the neighbourhood, and the line would necessarily pass through a great portion of his property. I was much struck with the reasons he urged in support of the superiority of this line over the one from Moscow to Odessa, which I see has since been determined on. The most palpable advantage which Theodosia possesses over all other Russian harbours, with the single exception of Sevastopol-which is devoted entirely to naval purposes-is one to which I have before alluded, viz., that it remains unfrozen all the year round. Situated in the midst of the garden of Russia, it possesses attractions denied to any other port in the kingdom; and its former opulence, as the centre of the commerce on the Black Sea, goes far to show that at the present day it would be a fitting terminus to so important a railway. The wines and the fruits of the southern coast would be thus conveyed into the interior, in addition to all those European importa