;

7: A Tour, performed in the Years 1795-6, brough The Taurida, or Crimea, the antient Kingdom of Bofphorus, the once-powerful Republick of Tauric Cherlon, and all the other Countries on the North Shore of the Euxine, ceded to Rulia by the Peace of Kainardgi and Jafly by Mrs. Maria Guthrie, formerly Acting-directress of the Imperial Convent for the Education of the Female Nobility of Ruffia; dferibed in a Series of Letters to ber Hufband, the Editor, Matthew Guthrie, MD F. R. S. and F. S. A. of London and Edinburgh, Member of the Pbilofophical Society of Mancheiter, &. &c. Physician to the Firft and Second Imperial Corps of Noble Cadets in St.. Peterburg, and Councillor of State to bis Imperial Majesty of all the Rath s. The

SCAR

bole infirated by a Map of the Tour along the Euxine Coast, from the Dnielter to the Cuban; with Engravings of a great Num ber of antient Coins, Medals, Monuments, Inferiptions, and other curious Obje&s. CARCELY had we concluded a partial tour through this celebrated tract, by the Secretary to the Ruflian Embaffy (fee p. 55-58), than we are called upon to join a female and a traveller in a more ample detail, whofe hufband occafionally tranfmitted to England fome brief remarks by himfelf during a journey that he made in the fame direction fome years ago: The lady has paid the debt to Nature; and to her modern defeription of each city, &c. he had, at her request, added its antient hiftory in different periods, being exactly the part of the new work which would connect it with another which he published at St. Petersburg, in French, in 1795, treating of the moral antiquities of the old dominions of Raflia, his "Noctes Rafficæ 1."

Thefe letters were originally written in French; but the editor, confcious of his inability to add his part in the lively elegant fiyle of the amiable writer, was obliged to tranflate the whole into English, fo that he alone must be the object of criticifm. They are illuftrated with coins of the different cities, of the exiflence of many of which they muft, perhaps, ferve as the best proofs, &c.

The lady, who is proud of fhewing her knowledge of hifiory and geography, and quoting old Herodotus, arrives,

Lady Craven's "Journey through the Crimea," published in 1739, 4to, was reviewed in our vol. LIX. p. 237.

+ Prof Pallas published another, 1794. A copy of his "Ruffian Antiquities" is left at Meffieurs Cadell and Davies. GENT. MAG. February, 1803.

after a journey of 2000 verfts, each containing 500 British fathoms, at the prefent feat of the naval establishment new city of Nicolayef on the Bog, the three eflential difadvantages of local of the Black Sea, founded, 1789, under pofition, being placed in the Scythian defert, where no wood ever grew naturally; fo that the oak-timber and naval ftores must be brought from a great diftance, and the want of freshwater. The furrounding deferts are. inhabited by roving herds of horfèmen, the shepherds of Holy Writ, ready at all times, if able, to overrun and plander men affembled in civil fociety, living peaceably and comfortably in fixed habitations. If the Nomades åre Shepherds in them than the Bedouin here intended, they have no more of Arabs, nor even the thepherds of Holy or any other Writ, who were harmless as their flocks. from what follows, a tranfpofition of It feems, therefore, the prefs, and that the roving horfemen were ready to plunder the fhepherds. fettled a colony of about 100 Turks, Salih Aga, a Turkish naval officer, has having, by travelling in Italy, France, and Great Britain, acquired fuperior lights to thofe of his countrymen. Mrs. G. found her expectations of the grapes of Soudak dilappointed; and made foil, well watered, will grow in that trees, by much attention, in a this defert.

Weftern boundary between the Ruffians Mrs. G. travels from the Duiefter, the and Turks at the peace of Kainardgi and Jaffy, to the Eattern to the river Cuban. The higheft of the towns built Gregorypol, an Armenian colony; Tyby the empress on her new frontier is rafopol, a fort and place of arms oppofite Bender; and Ovidopol, at the mouth of the Dnicfter. In this laft an urn found under a kind of kifivaen*, and alfo a terracotta female dreffed↑ of all which a drawing and an account were fent to the Society of Antiquaries

*Said, p. 418, to refemble the Ofuarium, or fquare box, in rubich the antients fent home the bones and afbes of a perfon deceafed abroad. For this affertion we with to have better authority, as well for the fquare box, which was of ftone or marble, as for the fifb-consuming coffin, or farcopbagus, which decomposed a corpfe in 4 days.

+ First imagined to be Diana, because the hair in front was dreffed like a crefcent; afterwards, that of Julia, with whom Ovid intrigued.

in

Doctor was fo highly impreffed with their importance, that he continues writing about them and about them, contradicting and being contradicted, to the end of the chapter. We return to his lady.

Another new port and city at the Adjebey of the Turks was new-chrif tened Odef by the archbishop of the new conquefts, from Odeffus, fuppo fed, by Danville and Peytonnel, the antient name of Ochakoff"; the re

in London, 1795, who have hitherto declined publishing it. In a note, p. 419, the Doctor speaks of the tomb fancifully fuppofed by fome people to be that of Ovid, though he gives it up p. 420; and though we are expreffly told by the poet (Ep. ex Ponto, 1. 8), that Tomé, where the Danube empties ittelf into the Pontus, Euxinas, or Black fea, ubi curuleis jungitur Ifter aquis; yet Scherer fays, in his Annales de la Petite Ruflie, "that Ovid's tomb exifis fix days' journey from the Bory-mains of the very wood in which Hethenes or Dnieper, but in what direction rodotus relates Anacharfis was fhot, he fays not, in a plain among antient performing his facrifices vowed to ruins, with a Latin infcription of four Cybele. lines. The coast is laid to have once borne the name of the tame poet, who mentions the rivers Benius and Lycus. In this tmb was found an amphora or vellel of the fame materials as the buft, but crafted over with fea-fhells, and thence fuppofed to be as old as Recupero's lava of Etna; and a very rude figure of a Priapus furrounded by four nymphs*, the lowermott of them offering him what looks like a pye, or fome kind of very large fruit, poffibly a watermelon, the most common production of the country," but which in the engraving is evidently a rum's head, on which the figure lays its right-hand. A pair of better eyes, thofe of a young portrait painter, difcovered this; atid thence it becomes emblematic of Panticupeum and Criu Motopon. This groupe is abfolutely compared to the figure of Nilet at Rome, with children climbing about him.

We have next a fculpture communicated to the fame learned body, though no information could be obtained, when, where, or how it was found, only that it came from a Tartar to an inhabitant of the North fhore of the Euxine. The Society entered thefe curiofities in their minutes, never fufpecting they would fee the light. The

* Or any other figures you pleafe to reprefent to your imagination..

+ Here called a Nilometre. We would afk who is the learned Prefident of the Society of Antiquaries to whom this letter, addrelled to a nameless correfpondent, was

addreffed, who wrote "A Differtation of

the Siege of Troy ?"

"In fhort, my wife fir," fays Mrs. G. (p. 28), "if you cavil at my Scythian conjectures, only take the trouble of turning over the records of your own favourite Antiquary Society, and, if you do not find in them fpeculations fully as improbable

5

In the IXth letter we arrive at Cherfon, where Admiral Mordwinoff infcribed on a tomb, “Here lies the benevolent Howard." From this city, on account of its unhealthy fituation, the feat of naval architecture for the Euxine was transferred to Nicolayef, though large men of war are ftill built here, and a garrifon remains. About 150 verfis up the river the Empress planted a colony of French emigrants. The antient Olbia is fuppofed to have stood about 10 verfts above Cherfon. The tombs of the Scythian kings at Gerrhe, deferibed by Herodotus, are fuppofed to have been opened by a gentleman of the Ukraine, who laid the foundation of his fortune by gold images and ornaments found in fome antient tombs on the banks of the Dnieper. Had his fon, a general in the Ruffian fervice, and man of much knowledge and liberality, been at Cherfon, he would have given a particular account of what his father found. (p. 38, n.) Our traveller, afcending the Dnieper 55 verfts higher, to a pafs the diftrict about which abounds with a fpecies of conic tumuli very common in the fiepts of antient Scythia or modern Tartary. The fmall town of Bereflave, at this pafs, has nothing to recommend it but its very fine view of the Dnieper, crofled here in a floating wooden bridge, which funk at every ftep, and let in the water between the boards. From the banks they travelled through a deep fandy road to a little village on the fkirts of the Nogay fiept, where the government or province of the Taurida begins fome time before

a

you may then fneer at thofe of your affectionate journalist,” Qu. Was not the Doctor impofed on first, and then tried to imPofe on his favourite Society?

you

you arrive at the peninfula itself, an immenfe extent of pafturage, whofe inhabitants feem to be greatly changed, of late years, by Ruffian polifh. The river Kalangard of the Rullian maps, at whofe mouth ftood the antient city Carcinatis, was the boundary of the primitive Scythia of Herodotus, a iquare fpace of 4000 ftades, or 400 Roman miles. An hour after paffing this river, we arrived at Perecop, the anuent Taphra. Przekop, in Tartar, fignifies, as taphrus in Greek, a ditch, the deep trench cut across the ifthmus, Here are ftill fome remains of the famous wall which, Xenophon tells us, was built by Dercyllius, general of the Lacedæmonians, within this ditch, 4 miles and 600 paces long, against the inroads of the Scythians, and, in afterages, defended by 600 towers, according to Procopius. The director of the falt-works here has a handfome houfe, and a good little library of Ruffian books.

Pallas places at Tarkhanskoy Kout. The trade of Kofloff confifis in falt, leather, and woollen carpets. In spite of all the rifques of Ottoman oppreffion, "I am much mistaken if thefe good people would not prefer being under the iron fceptre of the chief of their own religion to living under the mildeft government of a Chriftian prince: fuch is the empire which the able Muffulman prophet, Mahomet, has established over the minds of his votaries, apparently by infpiring a won derful degree of fanaticifm." (p. 66.)

Symphesopol, the new Tauric capital, in a charining country, decked with fine green fields, watered by the Salgir, was called by the Tartars Sultane Serai, from its having been the ordinary refidence of the Kalgha Soultang,. or commander in chief of the Crimean, army. Its houfes are built of flone, and roofed, in the antient Greek style, with tiles. There are likewife nume rous handfome modern buildings. Tchatirdagh, the highest mountaur of the Taurida, the antient Mons Berofus, is 20 versts diftant. (p. 67—69.)

We next travel through a valley, equally pleafing and full of variety, through which Alma rolls his limpid ftreanis, to Batcheferai, the refidence, making an earthly paradife, of its fo vereign the Khan, the Palatium of Strabo, and the Badatium of Ptolemy, with dirty, ill-paved, narrow fireets, a palace, fome thops, merely furnished with merchandize for the few wants of its inhabitants, and a primitive manufactory of knives. It is an aflemblage of Tartarian houfes, of uncouth forms,

"The Taurida is 56 miles long, from Perecop to the port of Balaklava, on the Euxine, and 200 miles broad, Cape Tarkantkoi projecting into the Black Sea, on the Weft, to the city of Jenikal, on the Cimmerian Bofphorus, or traits which divide the Taurida from the inland of Taman. The large river Salgir nearly divides the penin fula into two equal parts, and feparates the faline graffy tiept, or plain on the North, from the fine mountainous country to the South, the admiration and abode of polished commercial nations for upwards of 2000 years, who filled its ports with fhips and merchandize till the barbarous Turks fhut upftuck against the fides of the mounthe Thracian Bofphorus, and turned the bufy Euxine into a watery defert." (p. 54) The quantity of corn raifed in the falt part has rendered Taurida the granary of the Euxine, till the late wars depopulated it. The old town of Perecop fill confifts of fome hundreds of houfes, 5 verfts from the new, in the midft of an open burning plain. In this line patlure are reared the famous breed of Crimean or Tauric fheep, as well as many camels, dromedaries, and horfes. Paffing the river Cheablack, by a bridge of the Romans or Geno fe, we come to the fite of Ptolemy's city, Satarcha, which Peyffonnell finds in the village of Teketer

Ptolemy's Fapaturin is restored to halloff, where, however, Perfonnell placed Cherfon fue; and his Danduca

tains, and placed in circles, one above another, round the palace of the Chan, with ftreets between the rows of houfes. The palace is a curious_fpecies of painted Chinefe ftructure of various apartments, entered by a fpaciouscourt, having, on one hand, a hanging garden of terraces, and, on the other, the time-fculptured rocks. In the court is a handfome metchet, or mofque, with a lofty elaftic fpire, that shakes like a tree under you, while you view the whole city from its lofty fummit. Near it are two pretty rotundas, in which repofe the athes of a long line of chans, and a pretty little manfoletim erected by one of them to a beloved Chriftian wife. A finall interior court leads to a fine round veftibule, paved with white marble, and ornamented with

thre:

three fountains of clear, cool, and excellent water, ever playing. When the Emprefs vifited her new acquifition, the caused the hole city to he illuminated. (p. 69–77.)

Five verfts from this city flands an excavated mountain, called Tiape Kirman, of a conic form, covered with wood, and full of antient habitations, which are not only furnished with windows, but have cifterns full of water. There are two more fuch seven verfis South of this. (p. 77.) The hiftory of Chagin Girrey, the laft of the Chans, is thus related (pp. 78—82.)»

Chagin Girrey, the late Chan or Sovereign of Crim Tartary, having, whilst a youth, accompanied an embally from the reigning Chan to the Court of Catherine II was engaged by that politic princefs to remain in Petersburg as captain of her guards; happy, no doubt, to have one of the Imperial Ottoman family in her fervice, who might be useful on fome future occafion. An opportunity was not long wanting of making him eminently ufeful to Ruffia; as, after the Turkish war, fo ably conducted by the Field-marfbal Romanzoff, and ended by the peace of Kainardgi in 1774, Crim Taitary was fubdued by the Emprefs's arms, and its independence ftipulated in the treaty as one of the principal articles of peace agreed to by the Grand Sultan; which enabled Catherine to have her captain of the guards elected chan of the peninfula; the right of choosing a fovereign being left, of course, to the Tartars, by the Ottoman Court. This ftation he filled with dig nity, till Prince Potemkin had the addrefs to engage him, in 1783, to cede his fovereignty to the Imperial Crown of Ruffia, and retire into Woronetz on a yearly penfion of 100,oco roubles; at which city, and at Kalouga, he refided for about two years, till, grown tired of a retreat among men differing from himself in religion, customs, and manners, he petitioned Catherine for permiffion to visit his relations at Conftantinople. The Emprefs granted

his request; and the Chan was received like a fovereign, and a defcendant of Mahomet, by the Bahaw of Cotchim, who came out with a great retinue to meet him; and, after kitfing the skirt of his robe, prefented a letter from his relation the Grand Sultan, inviting him, in the kindeft Language, to his capital, and afforing him that he was always ready to receive and fuccour the unfortunate. On this flattering invitation, Chagin Girrey proceeded to Conftantinople, where he was at first well received, but foon after ordered to retire to the island of Rhodes, which he was fo well convinced was a fpecies of exile, the forerunner of death,

The

that he fought the protection of the French
Conful, who, it is faid, had actually pre-
pared a small veffel to favour his escape;
but, the wind being contrary, the fatal Ba-
fhaw arrived, and, by the information of >
one of the unhappy Chau's fuite, whom
he put to the torture, difcovered his master
hid under the Conful's floor. The Bathaw
chid the devoted prince for flying from one
fent by the Sultan to wait upon him and do
him honour; but a difh of coffee, prefent-
ed him foon after, put a period to à life
full of misfortones; and his head was fent
to his kind relation, in the usual style of
Turkish barbarity and defpotism.
gentleman to whom I owe the above rela-
top, fo little known to Europe, lived in
great intimacy with Chagin Girrey all the
time that he dwelt in Woronetz, and oc-
cafionally visited him in Kalougat. He
likewife favoured me with the following
curious anecdotes of his manner of living
in the first-mentioned city, when he had
an opportunity of feeing him almost every
day. The Chan (he faid) was a man of
good figure, with a moft piercing eye, and
potfelted an excellent understanding, not a
little cultivated, confidering his country.
His countenance was remarkably pale,
with ftrong marks of inward grief prey-
ing on his mind; a fufpicion confirmed hy
his diefs, which was always black after he
abdicated; and he conftantly wore a black
filk handkerchief on his head, which was
carried up each fide of his face from under
his chin, and tied above his turban. His

* "This very Coníu! (Mr. de Dutroui) is now in Petertburg, and has given me the whole ftory, too long and circumftantial to relate here; but the outine given is exact thus far, and is only deficient in defcribing the trouble that the Conful was put to in the affair, and the danger that he incurred from the enraged people, &c. as the whole island had, by the Grand Sultan, been made answerable for the escape of the devoted Chan. EDITOR."

"My friend and informer, I fince find, is mistaken with regard to what happened to the Chan after his departure for Constantinople; as the Conful fays, that he was obliged to give him up to the governor of the island, with whom he remained till the expected meffenger arrived, who frangled him in the ufual way with a bow-ftring : fo that the tortured flave, and poisoned coffee, the Ruffian gentleman must have taken from the report of travellers from Conftantinople; but his mode of life, &c. in this country, my friend was an eve witness of, and has fill a gold fauff-box by him, which he gave him as a keepfake."

"The Conful tells me, that his beard was always folded up under the black filk, and that he never let it hang down but in acts of religion, EDITOR."

laundrefs

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