Olympus; with its amphitheatres of guests, whose green mantle falls to the seashore; its "bouquets" of chestnut-trees, cypress, olives, Judas-trees, almonds, and laburnum, and its waterfalls,—is it not the most beautiful jewel in the crown of provinces which extends from the Black Sea to the Arctic Ocean? Is it not that vivifying and temperate climate that the Russians of the north as well as of the south unite in seeking; the former to gain a refuge from the severities of a hyperborean winter, the latter to find shelter from the dryness of the east winds? Have they not founded colonies, and built castles, houses, villas, and cottages around Cape Aïa, whose ram-like head defies the attacks of the Black Sea's waves, even to the extreme south of Tauris? Here we find Yalta and Aloupka, which belong to Prince Woronsow—a feudal manor outwardly, a dream of an oriental imagination within; Kisil Tasch, belonging to Count Poniatowski; Arteck, to Prince André Galitzin; Marsanda, Orcanda, Eriklik, imperial properties, and Livadia, a splendid palace with its cascades and streams, and whose winter gardens are the favourite retreat of the Empress of all the Russias.
Here all dispositions—the curious, the sentimental, the artistic, the romantic—will find something to satisfy them. This little corner of the earth is a microcosm wherein Europe and Asia mingle. Here we find Tartar villages, Greek towns, oriental cities, with mosques, minarets, muezzins, dervishes, monasteries of Russian foundation, seraglios, thebaïdes in which many romantic adventures are buried; holy places, to which pilgrims converge; a Jewish mountain, which belongs to the tribe of Karaites; and a valley of Jehoshaphat filled with tombs, like an antechamber to its prototype by the Cedron, where thousands of the justified will unite once again at the summons of the last trump.
What wonderful places Van Mitten had to see!—what novel impressions would he not have to note in this country, to which a strange destiny had led him! But his friend Kéraban did not travel for the purpose of seeing anything; and Ahmet, besides being familiar with the Crimea, would not allow an hour more than what was ab-
