ART. IV. 1. The Crimea and Odessa: Journal of a Tour, with an account of the Climate and Vegetation. By Dr. CHARLES KOCH: translated by JOANNA B. HORNER. 8vo. London: 1855.

2. An Historical Sketch of the Crimea. By ANTHONY GRANT, D.C.L., Archdeacon of St. Albans, &c. 12mo. London: 1855.

IT T is almost impossible to cast one's eyes upon the map. of Europe, without being struck by the remarkable geographical position of the Crimean peninsula. Projecting, like an advanced bastion, into the midst of the Black Sea, completely commanding the mouths of two of the greatest rivers of Eastern Europe, the Don and the Dnieper, and lying opposite to the Danube and the Bosphorus, it seems destined to secure the dominion of the Euxine and to exert the most important influence over all the surrounding countries, both of Asia and Europe. At the present moment, when the eyes of the whole civilised world are bent on this remote corner of the Russian Empire, and the question of ascendancy between the East and the West appears about to be decided within the narrow limits of the Crimea, an inquiry naturally suggests itself as to the past fortunes of a region destined to play so important a part in the present contest. Has the Crimea never before assumed that position in history, for which its geographical advantages so eminently qualify it? or has it first emerged from obscurity since it became annexed to the Russian Empire? Probably all our readers are aware that before the reign of Catherine II., it was governed by its own Tartar princes, as a dependency of the Turkish Empire; and many of them will remember the combination of fraud and force, intrigue and injustice, by which its transfer to the Russian Crown was effected. But we suspect that there are few among them who have any acquaintance with its history in earlier ages. And yet indications are not wanting that it has a past history, and that it has not always been the abode of wandering tribes of Tartars, like those who have swept over the plains of the Ukraine and the Steppes of the Volga, without leaving any permanent traces of their occupation or record of their existence.

In Dr. Koch's pleasant, but somewhat superficial, little volume, and more fully in the older and more satisfactory works of Clarke and Pallas, to which we recur for information concerning the Crimea not to be found in more

recent books of travels,it will be remarked, perhaps not without surprise, that numerous relics of Greek civilisation are still preserved on the shores of the Tauric peninsula ; and it may be inferred, that the high-sounding Greek names of Eupatoria and Theodosia are not mere modern fictions, but really preserve the memory of that highly gifted race, which has left the indelible marks of its presence whereever it established its widely disseminated colonies. On the other hand, the Genoese castles, whose mouldering towers still crown the rocks of Balaklava as well as the Straits of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, remind us of a period, — much more recent indeed, yet now almost equally forgotten, when that active and enterprising commercial people were the undisputed masters of the Euxine, and the trade with Persia and India was almost wholly centered in the Genoese colony of Kaffa. Even in the midst of the absorbing interests of the present, some of our readers may be glad for a moment to recur to the past, while we endeavour to present them with a brief review of the historical associations of the Crimea.

The establishment of the first Greek colonies on the shores of the Euxine belongs to a period before the commencement of authentic history. The greater part of those colonies were sent forth by the Ionian city of Miletus; and of the history of Miletus itself we know nothing, beyond the general fact, that it was in very early times one of the wealthiest and most flourishing cities of the Greek world, and that it was indebted for this prosperity to its extensive trade, and the commercial energy and activity of its people. It was, in fact, the Venice or Genoa of its day. But the greatness of Miletus had as completely passed away, as that of Venice or Genoa has now, before the period of Greek history with which we are most familiar. Even in the days of Aristophanes it had become a byword and a proverb for something altogether gone by. Hence we can scarcely expect any very accurate historical account of the foundation of its numerous colonies. But we know from the concurrent testimony of antiquity that it was to Miletus the Greeks were indebted for first opening to them the navigation of the long-dreaded waters of the Black Sea. Tradition had preserved the memory of the day, when that sea was still the terror of mariners; and when we remember

* Πάλαι ποτ ̓ ἦσαν ἄλκιμοι Μιλήσιοι, is the sarcastic remark of a young man to his antiquated mistress, when he wishes to remind her that her youth and beauty, like the greatness of the Milesians, were things of the past. (Aristoph.. Plutus, v. 1002.)

the kind of mysterious apprehension with which it was regarded even at the outbreak of the present war, we certainly cannot wonder at the fears it inspired in the infancy of navigation. We are rather struck with admiration at the boldness and energy of the people who could, with such imperfect resources, explore its unknown extent, and penetrate to its inmost recesses. The legend of the voyage of the Argonauts, in the form that it has been transmitted to us, is evidently founded upon traditionary tales of the dangers encountered by the first voyagers in the Euxine.

But the perils of the deep were not the only dangers these early colonists had to fear. Vague and mysterious stories were current of the fierce character and savage habits of the barbarians who bordered the shores of the Black Sea. The Tauri especially, from whom the Crimea derived its ancient name of the Tauric Chersonese, were represented as sacrificing human victims to their deities, and offering up without mercy the unhappy stranger who was unfortunate enough to be cast upon their shores. Herodotus speaks of this barbarous custom as if it still subsisted in his time; and there seems no doubt that it was really prevalent at the period when the Crimea was first visited by the Greeks. It thus became the basis of the wellknown legend of Iphigenia in Tauris, to which the Greeks certainly gave a local habitation' in the Crimea. The temple of the virgin goddess, in which the daughter of Agamemnon was believed to have officiated as priestess, was still shown in the days of Strabo; but the image of the deity was no longer to be found on its pedestal, according to the legend that it was carried off, together with Iphigenia herself, by Orestes and Pylades. The temple itself was situated within a few miles of the city of Chersonesus, on a lofty promontory commanding an extensive view over the sea; and its site has been fixed with much probability in the immediate neighbourhood of the monastery of St. George. It is a curious coincidence between the very earliest and the very latest records of this region, that the rocky headland from which the temple of the sanguinary goddess frowned upon the Greek mariner, should be the very same spot from which the wires of the electric telegraph have just been placed in communication with our own metropolis.

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Well might the Greeks give to a sea fraught with such dangers, both real and imaginary, the name of Axine, or the Inhospitable': it was not till the Milesians had in great measure dissipated its terrors, and peopled its coasts with Greek colonies, that it came to be known by that of the Euxine or the 'Hospitable,' which it has ever since preserved. So far as we

can discern through the dim historical twilight of this period, it was as early as the seventh, if not the eighth century before the Christian era, that this process of colonisation took place. It is certain that before the close of the sixth, the whole circuit of the Black Sea was surrounded with a complete girdle of Greek towns, several of which were already engaged in an extensive trade with the interior and had risen to a condition of opulence and prosperity; while they all had carried with them their language, their civilisation, their religious legends, and their republican institutions. Other cities had followed the example of Miletus; and the Greeks had made themselves at home on the shores of Scythia, as well as on those of Gaul and Africa.

There can be little doubt that the colonies along the western and southern shores of the Euxine preceded those on its northern coast. At a very early period a range of flourishing Greek cities already extended along the southern coast of the Euxine from Heraclea to Trebizond. The most considerable of these was Sinope, a name so familiar to us all from the recent catastrophe of the Turkish fleet, but equally well known to Herodotus and Xenophon as one of the most important commercial cities in the Black Sea. Eastward of this were Amisus (Samsoun), Cerasus, and Trapezus or Trebizond itself: all of them either colonies of Sinope or founded directly from the parent city of Miletus. The cities on the west coast were of inferior importance and never rose to any great prosperity; but two of them may deserve a passing notice: - Odessus, which seems to have occupied the same site as Varna, while its name has been transferred by Russian caprice to the now celebrated city of Odessa ; and Tomi, so well known to every schoolboy, as the place of exile of Ovid, from whence he poured forth his querulous elegies. We cease to wonder at the lamentations of the unfortunate poet when we learn that the place of his banishment was situated within a few miles of Kustendji, on the coast of the barren and insalubrious Dobrudscha.

But it is with the colonies established along the northern shores of the Euxine that we are now more immediately concerned. One of the most important of these apparently in early times the most considerable of them all was Olbia or Olbiopolis the wealthy city,' as it was called by its inhabitants, though better known to the Greeks in general by the name of Borysthenes, from the great river (now called the Dnieper), near the mouth of which it was situated. Its position on the estuary of the Dnieper, just where it receives the river Bug (the Hypanis of the Greeks), secured to it very much the same com

mercial advantages with the modern city of Odessa, about fifty miles further west; and the rapidity with which this Russian port, which scarcely counts more than sixty years of existence, has risen into a great and opulent city, will serve to illustrate the manner in which the Milesian colony of Olbia attained to the prosperity from which it derived its name. It was visited by Herodotus in his travels, and it was there he collected the curious and valuable information concerning the Scythian tribes of the interior, which he has left us in the fourth book of his history. The extent and accuracy of his knowledge sufficiently shows how widely spread were the relations which the Greeks had already established with the barbarian nations from the banks of the Dnieper to the sources of the Don and the Ural mountains.

Next to Olbia, but inferior to it in importance, was the city of Chersonesus, or Cherson, as it was called in later times, which was placed near the western extremity of the Tauric peninsula, in the immediate neighbourhood of Sebastopol, and on the very ground now the scene of contention between the French and Russian armies. Its ruins were still visible, on the west side of the Quarantine Bay", when the Crimea was visited at the beginning of this century by Pallas and Clarke, but they have now almost entirely disappeared. Dr. Koch complains that he could find but little of what had been described even much more recently by Dubois de Montpéreux : and the last remains of this long flourishing and powerful city have been carried away piecemeal to furnish materials for the modern buildings of Sebastopol. An imperial ukase has, it appears, been recently issued when the mischief was already in great part done to prohibit such Vandalism; but it has been obeyed as such decrees usually are when no one in authority is interested in enforcing them.

Chersonesus, which was not, like its neighbours, of Milesian

Some remains are also to be found, or were so till very lately, on the south side of the Bay of Kamiesch. These, which are marked on several maps as the ruins of Cherson, are evidently the remains of the old city of that name, which was already in ruins in the days of Strabo, the inhabitants having quitted the site for that nearer Sebastopol. (Strabo, vii. 4. p. 308.)

†This author, who, in 1832, devoted two months to an elaborate examination of the ruins of Chersonesus, of which he has given us a complete plan and description, himself remarks that their destruction was going on with such rapidity, that he was in haste to take an account of what still remained, before they should have entirely disappeared. (Voyage autour du Caucase, vol. vi. p. 137.)