for the protection of Cherson from the interior tribes. Here the remains of fortifications crown a platform of bold rock, the sides of which are crowded with excavated caves and chambers, as well as those of the rocks in the neighbourhood. The existing ruined towers and walls on the height are not indeed relics of the original citadel, but of some more recent fortress erected upon its site, a commanding military station. Neither are the caves and grots monuments of the Greek period. Some, perhaps, belong to a remoter age, having been commenced by the savage aborigines, who burrowed into the rocks for dwelling places; but the great majority are of later date, the work of exiles, refugees, recluses and monks of the early Christian epoch. Some of the pagan Roman emperors used the Chersonese territory as a place of banishment for persons who fell under their displeasure. If we may believe ecclesiastical tradition, Clement of Rome was exiled to this district by order of Trajan, and doomed to work in the quarries. One of his converts, a niece of the Emperor Titus, is also said to have been banished to the Chersonese. The province probably invited many refugees from persecution to it by remoteness of position, while its rocky fastnesses offered a suitable retreat from the

н 4

world to voluntary recluses intent upon an ascetic life. The refugees to escape notice, and the recluses to indulge superstition, originated the peculiar features of the locality. After being known by the name of Theodori, while a religious establishment in regular connection with the Greek Church, it received that of Inkerman from Turkish conquerors, signifying the " town of caverns."

The caves, small, plain, and without ornament, have evidently been the cells of monks. The sides still exhibit chisel-marks. Hollows for fires are traceable, and excavated recesses for nightly slumber. So numerously are they grouped in places, and united by narrow winding galleries, as to constitute entire subterranean monasteries. Other caves have served as sepulchres, stone coffins having been found in them, long since emptied of their human bones, and converted into drinking-troughs for cattle. Others more spacious, with semicircular vaulted roofs, and pillars from which spring arches forming aisles, exhibit the Greek cross, sufficiently proclaiming their character as Byzantine churches or chapels. Altars, or any moveable sculptured blocks they might once contain, are gone, built up perhaps into some work at Sebastopol, or burnt into lime for

its erections. In recent times, Tatars, with their families and goats, occupied these rocky dwellings. They have since been used as powder magazines, or military storehouses; and more recently, Russian, British, and French soldiers have been engaged in ferretting each other out of them.

One of the first English visitors to this spot, Lady Craven, afterwards Margravine of Anspach, thus wrote respecting it in 1786: "The Count Wynowitch commands here, and has a little farm at Inkerman, which must once have been a very considerable and extraordinary town: at present the only remains of it are rooms hewn out of the rock. Here is a large chapel, the pillars and altars of which are extremely curious: the stone is whitish, and not unlike marble. I climbed up a staircase, and crept into and out of very extraordinary spaces, large and commodious. I entered at the bottom of these singular habitations, and, like a chimney-sweeper, came out at the top; and though it cost me not a little trouble in turning and climbing up so high, I had no idea of having mounted so much, till on looking about me I turned quite giddy on seeing the Bay of Inkerman and all the Black Sea at least 250 feet beneath the place where I stood." Lady Craven judged rightly of

the capabilities of the adjoining roadstead at a period when no Sebastopol existed on its shores: "From the singularity of the coast, the harbour is unlike any other I ever saw. It is a long creek, formed by the Black Sea between two ridges of land, so high that The Glory of Catherine,' one of the largest ships in the Russian navy, which is at anchor here, cannot be seen, as the shore is above the pendant. The water is so deep that this ship touches the land. All the fleets of Europe would be safe from storms or enemies in these creeks or harbours, for there are many. Batteries at the entrance of them, on one side, would be sufficient effectually to destroy any ships that would venture in, and placed towards the sea, must even prevent the entrance of a fleet."

Nature maintains its integrity after the lapse of ages, while the handiwork of man crumbles and perishes. The cities, temples, gates, and walls of the ancient Greeks have vanished from the sites they occupied on the Taurian shore, owing to the wear of the elements and human spoliation. But the storms they encountered, the inlets which sheltered their barks, and the majestic headlands on which they gazed, are still distinctive features of the Crimea. If Cape Parthenium cannot be certainly identified,

it is because several bold towering cliffs in the indicated district, against which the waves fret and dash, answer to the description. Between Balaklava and the monastery of St. George, a perpendicular and tremendous precipice, one of the loftiest on the coast, terminates abruptly at the sea, called by the Tatars Aija Bürün, or the Sacred Promontory.