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whether king or queen, man or woman, fish, flesh, or fowl, was the object intended. Journalising accounts of the passage of fleets, the march of armies, the hurly-burly of camps, and the stern tug of battle, with cheap plans of the seat of hostilities, have performed the office of the geographical instructor.

While information has thus been extended in western Europe respecting its eastern countries, the advantage has doubtless been reciprocated by the Orientals, at least to some small extent. Never since the days of Godfrey de Bouillon has Constantinople seen such a gathering of Europeans in its neighbourhood, as that which the passage of the Anglo-French fleets and armies through the Bosphorus presented to its inhabitants. The spectacle wrung many a Mashallah! Allah is great! from the cross-legged, coffee-sipping, chibouque-smoking, and apathetic Turks. Their ideas can scarcely fail to have been rectified and enlarged by it respecting the resources of the two great nations of the Giaours who so gallantly came to their aid against the overbearing Muscovite; while it may be surmised, that some knowledge of the home quarters of their occidental auxiliaries has been incidentally acquired. The subjects of His Highness the Sultan have not been famous for their geographical accomplishments. Even

members of the Divan have more than once made an amusing display of their deficiencies. Von Hammer relates, that when he was interpreter at Constantinople, in the year 1800, and it was proposed to bring an Anglo-Indian force to the assistance of the Porte, the grand-vizier stoutly denied the possibility of the undertaking, not being aware of any communication subsisting between the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. Sir Sydney Smith with great difficulty convinced him, by the exhibition of charts and other authorities, that the two seas are connected. Farther back, in 1769, when the Russian fleet for the first time made its way round western Europe, intent upon cruising against the Turks in the Greek Archipelago, the Divan positively refused to credit the tidings of the armament, gravely alleging that no maritime passage existed between the Baltic and the Mediterranean! When somewhat

staggered in its incredulity, application was made to the Austrian government to prevent the passage of the ships by Trieste and the Adriatic! The counsellors of the Sultan are now better acquainted with the map of Europe, for through nearly half a century, the dangers with which the Ottoman Empire has been menaced, have enforced attention to it, especially to the whereabouts and means of its western nations,

-topics which the present tremendous struggle must have illustrated more generally to the oriental mind. Not to deal unfairly, it may be remarked, that authorities on the Bosphorus have not been the only men in office at fault in their geography. It is within memory, that our own Colonial office sent out a document, the work probably of some new hand, not put into place by merit, in which one of our dependencies on the South American main was defined to be a West India island.

A brief description of the physical geography of the Crimea will appropriately precede a general review of its history.

The Crimea, formerly called Crim-Tatary, and in remoter times known by the designation of Taurica Chersonesus, is a peninsula on the northern shore of the Black Sea, projecting into it from the mainland of southern Russia. It forms part of the extreme south-eastern corner of Europe. The territory, henceforth of celebrity in our annals, lies between the meridians of 32° 45' and 36° 39′ east longitude, and between the parallels of 44° 40′ and 46° 5′ north latitude; thus corresponding in its latitudinal position with the north of Italy and the south of France. It extends rather more than 130 miles from north to south by 170 miles from west to east; but the latter

direction embraces a long narrow strip of country, abutting eastward from the main mass. The total area is estimated at 10,050 square miles, which is equal to that of our own principality of Wales, with the addition to it of the English border counties.

In the middle ages, travellers sometimes styled the Crimea the Island of Caffa, in allusion to the city of that name on the east coast, and to the almost complete insulation of the territory; in fact, that it once was entirely detached from the continent, a true island, is very probable. This was the opinion of Strabo, Pliny, and Herodotus; and the character of the neck of land connecting the peninsula with the European main sustains the hypothesis. The Isthmus of Perekop, the tract in question, about seventeen miles in length by five in breadth, is so low that, from the centre the seas on either hand are apparently above the level of the spectator, and seem only to want a slight impulse from the wind in order to unite their waters. In far remote times, the Greeks fortified the isthmus, the Taphros of their geography. This name, Tapos, signifies "a ditch," and alludes to the defensive work. There appears, also, to have been a town in the neighbourhood bearing the same denomination. The fosse ran from sea to sea, and had towers at intervals, which were anxiously

guarded, to prevent the incursions of barbarous tribes. In a similar manner, and at the same point, the isthmus has ever since been fortified. Taphros, as the name of an inhabited site, was followed by that of Or-Gapy, or the "Royal Gate," the grandiloquent title of a humble Tatar village, referring to the passage into the Crimea at the spot by a bridge over the moat, and an arched gateway beneath a tower. Russia finally substituted the present name, Perekop, signifying a trench between two seas. The fosse, wide and deep, still exists, though much dilapidated; and the other fortifications are not fit for defence.

The peninsula contains three similar tracts upon a smaller scale. One of these is the nook of land on the south-west coast, bounded by the sea, and a line running from the far extremity of the principal harbour of Sebastopol to the inlet of Balaklava. This was the Chersonesus Heracleotica of the ancients, sometimes called the Small Chersonesus, to distinguish it from the main body of the country, or the Great Chersonesus. The district is associated with many poetic and historical memorials of the olden time; and has now, for more than six months, absorbed the attention of the civilised world. limits include the southern side of Sebastopol, the camps, batteries, and trenches of the allied armies,

Its

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