rally mild till April, when the mercury fell several degrees below zero. These late intervals of cold are styled by the Tatars the "starling's winter" and the "hoopoo's winter." The birds are the harbingers of spring. Having accomplished their northerly migration from Asia Minor to the Crimea at the appointed time, they perish in great numbers, when the spring is of such an exceptional character that the rigour of winter is felt in it. Ordinarily the winter is harsh and ungentle, with intervals of severe cold and deep snow, most commonly experienced in February. But the mean temperature of the season is 5° or 6° higher at Sebastopol than on the northern plains, and the sheltered region of the south coast has a difference of from 20° to 25° in its favour. When Dr. E. D. Clarke was in the peninsula, he met with a poor Tatar lamenting in his garden the havoc, made among his fruit-trees by a severe spring frost. "We never," said he, "used to experience such hard weather; but since the Russians came, they seem to have brought their winter along with them." Aged men of the race express the same opinion at present; and also affirm the summer droughts to have become longer and more intense. There is probably no foundation for this persuasion in fact. It seems rather to be an

example of the favourable feeling with which the past is very commonly regarded, wholly irrespective of its merits, under the pressure of some present hardship.

Storms of fearful violence, accompanied with rain, sleet, or snow, visit the Crimea, with the whole of Southern Russia, and the adjoining seas, in winter, and about the time of the equinoxes, one of which made havoc with the encampment of the allied armies before Sebastopol, and with the fleet on the neighbouring waters, towards the close of the past year. The Russians distinguish three classes of storms, and give them distinctive names. The mildest form, called the Miatjel, corresponds to the wildest weather to which we are accustomed, the snow, sleet, or rain simply descending from the clouds. The second and severer kind of storm, the Samet, occurs more rarely, though the winter seldom passes away without one. It raises the snow from the ground with its whirl in vast masses, and drives it forward horizontally, filling up ravines, and sometimes burying men and cattle beneath the drift. In-doors, there is tolerable security from danger. Abroad, the traveller may protect himself by gaining the shelter of a forest; and a large number of men or beasts, forming a caravan, may withstand the

blast in an open country by grouping together. But woe betide the solitary wayfarer with no shelter at hand. The driving shower of snow blinds him; and no horse will move, though flogged and spurred to the utmost. But the third kind of storm, the Wiuga, far exceeds the second in violence, though still more rare, and always announcing its coming by unmistakable indications. When these have appeared, no one sets out upon a journey, not even to the next village, though only a verst or two off, lest the dreaded monster should overtake him. Precautions are taken for the safety of the houses by protecting them on the north side with heavy stones, and propping them up on the south. Droves of cattle, flocks of sheep, and troops of wild horses in the steppes, gather in a compact circle to resist the gale, if no shelter is attainable. But entire groups have been driven before it with headlong speed, till blown over the edge of a precipice into a ravine, or swept from the cliffs into the Black Sea. There have been instances of men near the sea being surprised by the hurricane, and forced into the water; while roofs, trees, stones, and other objects in the path of the tempest, are taken up from the earth like chaff from the threshing-floor, and conveyed by the eddying air whole versts away. Government

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couriers are excused if, during the three days the Wiuga is abroad,—its usual duration,—they remain closely housed at the post stations. Teeming with storms "the phrase of Strabo in relation to the mountainous maritime district of the Crimea is seasonally true.

G

THE story of the Crimea extends through an interval of more than twenty-four centuries; but there are many gaps in the narrative which cannot be filled up, and as many passages in which it is impossible to infuse the slightest interest, consisting chiefly of a meagre enumeration of names and dates. The peninsula is associated with the early annals of Greece, and the proudest periods of Roman history. It was to Athens in the age of Demosthenes what Egypt became to Rome in the days of the Empire, the country upon which her citizens depended for the staff of life, a mart for her traders, and a nursery for her marine. To the date of at least six centuries