with the fields which witnessed the chivalric display of Balaklava and the bloody fight of Inkerman. The second peninsula is that of Kertch, on the east, well known to the merchants of ancient Athens, and historically memorable as the seat, for eight centuries, of the kingdom of the Bosphorus. It lies between the Sea of Azof and the Black Sea, extends about eighty miles from west to east, by a medium width of twenty-four miles from north to south, and is connected with the rest of the country by an isthmus little more than ten miles broad, forming a level plain. The third minor peninsula is physically remarkable as a tongue of land projecting northerly from the former tract at Arabat, seventy miles in length, but often not more than a quarter of a mile in width. It separates the Sea of Azof from its arm, the Putrid Sea, and is very slightly raised above their level. The two seas communicate at the north extremity through the somewhat pompously designated Strait of Genatch; for it has more the aspect of an artificial canal than a natural channel, being only 100 yards wide. Here a bridge connects the peninsula with the main land of Russia; and by this route the chief intercourse between the eastern part of Crimea and the continent is carried on. A road runs along the narrow causeway, on which several

post-stations are established for the convenience of travellers. But rapid travelling is often impeded by the sottishness of the masters, who stupefy themselves with bad brandy, to relieve the isolation and monotony of their position. Demidoff encountered one of these professed auxiliaries of locomotion, who could never remember what he had done the day before, and who answered his demand for horses with sundry inarticulate sounds and salutations, accompanied by every kind of gesture which drunkenness could prompt. The singular promontory consists partly of shelly sand, clothed with excellent pasturage, and partly of barren saline sand, more or less consolidated. Besides the post-stations, the huts of peasantry are scattered at intervals over it.

The Black Sea washes the Crimea on the west and south; and being tideless, the waters of landlocked inlets have a lake-like aspect. This expanse is distinguished by its vast size, compact form, and nearly unbroken surface, for only one small island near the mouth of the Danube, and two rocks off shore in the Crimea, interrupt its continuity. The extreme length, east and west, is about 690 miles, and the greatest breadth, north and south, between Odessa and the Channel of Constantinople, 390 miles. The breadth diminishes to rather less than 160 miles

between the south point of the Crimea and Sinope on the opposite shore of Asia Minor. It expands eastwards to 300 miles, but decreases towards the extremity. The area occupied by the waters is estimated at 180,000 square miles. This exceeds the area of the Baltic or the Caspian, but is less than that of the North Sea. The total area of the basin, which includes the countries drained by the Danube, the Dneister, the Dneiper, the Bog, the Don, the Kuban, and other rivers, is not far short of 1,000,000 of square miles, comprehending nearly one-third of Europe, and a small portion of southwestern Asia. The length of the coast-line is upwards of 2000 miles. Polybius gives the diagonal distance across the sea, from the Thracian to the Cimmerian Bosphorus, or from the Channel of Constantinople to the Strait of Kertch, at 500 Roman miles, which is very nearly correct, and shows that the ancients had a more accurate method of determining a ship's way than is commonly imagined. They compared its form to that of the Scythian bow, taking the south coast for the string, and the remainder for the bow, a rude but not very inaccurate resemblance. Owing to the immense amount of sediment brought down by the northern rivers, Polybius hazarded the prediction, that the sea was

doomed to become unfit for navigation, if not absolutely converted into dry land. But the depth of its bed, with the vigorous and constant rush of water through the Channel of Constantinople, will always sufficiently dispose of the alluvial soil of the rivers without such a consummation, though at their mouths the formation of new land is in process. In the time of the Greek geographers, a great bank, a thousand stadia in length, existed at the distance of one day's sail from the Danube, upon which the sailors often ran aground by night, no traces of which are to be found at present. Probably the land at the mouth of the river has so increased in the lapse of nineteen or twenty centuries, that what was then a bank from thirty to forty miles off-shore, (a moderate computation for a day's sail,) has since become an integral part of it. The Black Sea, though not so salt as the Mediterranean, is much salter than the Baltic, notwithstanding a vast influx of fresh water from its mighty rivers, and a constant outflow by the passage of Constantinople. To account for this, some physical geographers have had recourse to an under-current from the Archipelago, making its way through the Dardanelles to the Bosphorus, and communicating its saltness to the waters with which it finally commingles. But the

great abundance of salt in the countries on the northern shores, some of which must constantly be finding its way to the sea by the drainage, is an adequate and more satisfactory explanation.

This great inland reservoir has been known under various and contradictory designations. The Latin writers often called it simply Pontus, the sea. The Greeks, in their earliest age, styled it Axenus, or

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inhospitable." It owed this name probably to the stormy weather common at certain times of the year, formidable and perilous to timid and unskilful mariners, as well as to the barbarity of the nations on its shores, some of the northern Scythian hordes being reputed cannibals. At a subsequent date, when the Greeks had established colonies upon the coast, they substituted the more auspicious title of Euxinus," hospitable," " friendly to strangers,” out of compliment to their own civilised habits, and as an inducement to emigration. But a bad character, justly or unjustly acquired, adheres with extraordinary tenacity; and notwithstanding the change of style, the old adage about once giving a dog a bad name was verified in this case. The world persisted in thinking as ill of the Euxine as of the Axenus ; and it still retains the impression, that there is something specially unfavourable in its character,