to the Tatars, but they could not brook the indignity of a rule imposed without their consent. While preparing to act upon the offensive, they sent an embassy to Mohammed, offering him the Genoese colonies as the price of his assistance; and even preferred to see their country dependent upon a Mohammedan power, than subject to the insolent dictation of Christian foreigners. The Sultan responded to the invitation. On the 1st of June, 1475, a Turkish fleet of more than 400 sail, with an army of 20,000 men, commanded by the celebrated grand-vizier Ahmed Pasha, appeared in the Bay of Kaffa, while the Tatars assisted by land in the reduction of the place. The modern artillery employed by the Turks having battered down the walls and public buildings, the city surrendered on the 6th; and its inhabitants were doomed to the pillage and slavery which attended the Ottoman conquests of the age. After taking possession of the consular palace, the vizier disarmed the population, forbade indiscriminate pillage, but seized half the property of the people, and laid claim to all the slaves. 40,000 men, women, and children, were shipped on board the fleet, and carried to Constantinople, to fill up the waste places which had been made in the capital by the events of war. 1500

youths were taken from their parents to be trained as members of the Sultan's body-guard. The minor settlements, Soudak, Balaklava, Inkerman, and Mangoup, shared the fate of Kaffa, but held out longer, being naturally stronger places, and more bravely defended. From the Maiden Tower of the fortress of Soudak the banner of the republic last streamed to the breeze, its garrison only yielding to famine.

The massive ruins of walls, bastions, forts, and watch-towers, two churches, preserved by the Armenians and Catholics,-an entire street running parallel to the shore, with an arcade before the houses, as in the cities of Northern Italy, - slabs sculptured with the arms of the republic, of the great families, and of the Bank of St. George, sometimes appropriated to vulgar uses, are the chief memorials of Italian enterprise in the Kaffa or Theodosia of the present day. The name of the consul at the time of the Turkish conquest may perhaps be gathered from an inscription. It occurs beneath three coats of arms sculptured on a block belonging to the wall of the fortress. The date is only one year prior to the event, showing that the magistrates, in anticipation of an attack, had been strengthening or completing their fortifications. The error in the word tempore

is curious, but whether the blunder of a workman, or an evidence of accomplished Latinity on the part of his employers, it is impossible to say.

TENPORE. MAGNIFICI DOMINI BATISTE

JUSTINIANI. CONSULIS . MCCCCLXXIIII.

The museum has an epitaph from one of the churches dating in the year 1523. It proves that there were Genoese on the spot, who did not die unhonoured, forty-eight years after the fall of the colony. On the south coast of the Crimea, the use of such words by the Tatars as tas, cup; camera, chamber; and mangia, to eat, is an existing relic of the connection of their fathers with the traders of the Mediterranean. The Lombardy poplars of the country form another memorial.

The Venetians obtained the right of free navigation of the Black Sea from the stern custodian of its gates, upon payment of the annual sum of ten thousand ducats; and maintained a fleet of twentyfour war-galleys to protect their merchant flag. Four vessels were stationed in the Sea of Azof, on the shore of which the modern town of that name rose on the ruins of Tana. But upon war breaking out between Venice and the Porte, in the time of the next sultan, Bajazet II., the communication was

cut off; and not renewed till the conclusion of the peace. His successor, Soliman the Magnificent, restricted the navigation to his own subjects; but at that period Europe no longer wanted it for the same purpose as formerly, the commerce with Southern and Eastern Asia having taken the route by the Cape of Good Hope. After a severance of upwards of three centuries and a half, the Sardinian contingent to the British army in the Crimea, recently arrived at Balaklava, renews the connection of the peninsula with Genoa the Superb.

COSSACKS AND TATARS. SIEGE OF VIENNA. SELIM GHERAI. COMMERCE OF THE BLACK SEA. THE

PORTE AND THE KHANATE.-MILITARY SYSTEM.-OFFI

THE sultan did not despatch his army to the Crimea merely to take possession of the settlements of the Genoese, and deliver the Tatars from their domination; but to constitute the country an appanage of his empire. The design was accomplished without difficulty. So far from feeling humiliated, it gratified the pride of the people to be associated with a religionist of their own creed on the throne of Constantinople, the most powerful chief of Islam, whose fame was European and Asiatic, and whose

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