at present; for only the most northerly ports of the Black Sea, with the Strait of Kertch, and the Sea of Azof, are now annually ice-bound. Shakspeare, in the tragedy of Othello, mentions the "icy current of the Pontic Sea;" and the Channel of Constantinople itself has answered to the description. In A. D. 401, large tracts of the Euxine were strongly frozen; and when the weather broke up, such mountains of ice drifted by the city as frightened the inhabitants. In the reign of Constantine Copronymus, so severe a winter occurred, that people walked upon the ice from Constantinople to Scutari. Either of these events now would be quite a phenomenon.

The ecclesiastic, even more than the poet, has been guilty of exaggeration with reference to the Pontic region. Tertullian, declaiming against the heretic Marcion, has supplied the following unsurpassed sample of libellous writing: "That tract which is called the Pontus Euxinus the hospitable sea has been refused all favours, and is mocked by its very name. The day is never open-the sun never shines willingly. There is but one atmosphere -fog. The whole year is wintry; every wind that blows comes from the north; liquors are only such before the fire; the rivers are blocked up with ice; the mountains are heaped higher with snow; all

things are benumbed and stiff with cold. Nothing but cruelty has there the warmth of life; such cruelty, I mean, which has supplied the stage with fables concerning the sacrifices of the Tauri, the loves of Colchis, and the tortures of Caucasus. But there is nothing so barbarous and miserable in Pontus as that it has given birth to Marcion. He is more savage than a Scythian, more unstable than the wild inhabitant of a wagon, more inhuman than the Massagetæ, more audacious than the Amazon, darker than the mist, colder than the winter, more brittle than the ice, more treacherous than the Danube, more precipitous than Caucasus." Well may the Euxine, with such descriptions afloat, have been in bad odour throughout the world, conceived of by the popular imagination as a kind of enormous Styx, fit only for satyrs to visit, and centaurs to navigate.

The truth is, that the Black Sea has its special dangers and demerits like most other parts of Neptune's empire. Tremendous storms from the north occasionally visit it in winter, and at the equinoxes, accompanied with blinding snow or sleet. Dense fogs are common in spring and autumn, and a slight gale ruffles the surface with harassing, though not perilous, billows. On the other hand, it is admirably adapted for navigation through many months of the

year, being generally deep, so that the largest ships may often sail close in shore, unobstructed with shoals and islands, affording ample sea-room and possessing several excellent harbours. But, till a very recent date, the nations in command of its shores have done little or nothing to facilitate the safety of the mariners who visit them. Upon a coast-line of more than 2000 miles there are not more than twenty lighthouses. The charts have been few in number, and for the most part inaccurate, while the majority of the seamen would be classed with "landlubbers " by sailors accustomed to double Cape Horn. The Turk does his best in the storm, but cares little for chart or compass, and resigns himself to a disaster as the irrevocable decree of kismet or fate. The Russian crews of coasting vessels are scarcely more advanced. The first expedient commonly adopted in rough weather is to throw everything moveable overboard, and if there is no improvement, the next and final experiment is to throw themselves before the images of saints, abandoning the ship to the care of St. Nicholas or St. Alexander Nevsky. It is related that an English captain, on approaching the Dardanelles, met with a vessel from the Crimea, the master of which asked him where he was. It appeared that, after having

been driven hither and thither by a gale of wind, he had been forced out of the Black Sea through the Bosphorus, the Propontis, and the Dardanelles, and was quite unable to ascertain his position. Not many years have elapsed since some of the Russian men-of-war had the inglorious reputation of being manned with fair-weather and smooth-water sailors, the greater part of the officers and crews being always sea-sick when the breeze blew strong. Once, when the admiral was between Sebastopol and Odessa, it is said, that he and his officers were so completely at fault, that observing a village on shore, the flaglieutenant proposed to land in order to inquire the way. Though there is malicious wit in this statement, it is nevertheless true that, to very modern times, the Euxine has had to bear the blame of many a mishap which was simply the result of deficient nautical skill.

The Crimea is bounded on the east by the Sea of Azof, with its arm, the Putrid Sea, and the Strait of Kertch, through which communication is maintained with the Black Sea. The former is the Palus Mæotis of the Latin and Greek geographers. Though extending nearly 200 miles from north-east to southwest, by 100 in the opposite direction, its character is far more lacustrine than sea-like, the water being

everywhere shallow and comparatively fresh. The greatest depth in the centre never exceeds seven and a half fathoms, while towards the shores there is rarely water sufficient to allow of the close approach of a twelve-oared row-boat. At Taganrog, on the northern coast, ships lie off at the distance of fifteen versts, about ten miles, to unload or take in their cargoes. From hence to Azof, on the opposite shore, a shoal extends, or rather a continuation of shoals; and when violent east winds blow, the sea retires so remarkably, that the inhabitants are able to effect the passage between the two points on land, a distance of about fourteen miles. But the experiment is somewhat hazardous, as the wind shifts suddenly, and rapidly brings back the waters, to the occasional destruction of human life. This singular kind of monsoon takes place almost every year after midsummer. The sea is supposed by the people on its shores to be rapidly filling up; and there seems to be no doubt of the fact. Pallas records, in 1793, the launch of a large frigate where lighters now sail with difficulty. This is the consequence of the mud and slime discharged by the Don, which also render the waters anything but blue and limpid. From November to March the surface is frozen, and the navigation is seldom safe earlier than April. From