The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

448 RUSSIA IN EUROPE.their honesty, simple habits, endurance, and perseverance.The name of Kara'im,or Karaites—that is, " Readers " —derives from the constant study of Holy "Writ,the commentaries on which they reject. Hence they hold aloof from the otherJews, although much esteemed by them for the care with which they have preservedthe old doctrines. Many believe them to be the Khazars, who were partlyconverted to Judaism, and who dwelt on the Volga, in the Crimea, and at thefoot of the Caucasus. They may have also become intermingled with the KrimTatars, to whom they have been assimilated in speech and costume, and whomthey resemble more than they do the Jews themselves.Topography.Perekop, or the "Cutting," the Or or Ur of the Tatars, the town guardingthe entrance to the Crimea at its narrowest approach, occupies the site of theancient Taphros, whose defences were restored by Mengli Ghire'i in the fifteenthcentury. These lines were again replaced by fresh works and modern redoubtserected during the Crimean war. But the commerce of the isthmus is notcarried on at Perekop, but at the large Armenian settlement of ArmanskiyBazar, 3 miles farther south. In the stepj)es stretching south of the isthmus,and washed by the "Dead Sea" on the west and the "Putrid Sea" on the east,there are no towns until wo reach the ancient Eupatoria, on the west coast, namedfrom a fortress founded in honour of Mithridates Eupator, which, however, seemsto have been situated still farther south, on the site of the present Sebastopol.Simferopol, capital of the Crimea and of the government of Taurida, occupies acentral position in the fertile valley of the Salgir, at the northern issue of the passaffording the readiest approach to the south coast east of the Chatir Dagk.Here wasthe old Tatar town of Ak-Mecket, or the " "White Mosque," burnt by the Russiansin 1 '>(>, and in 1784 rebuilt under the Greek name of Sympheropolis. A fewTatar structures, which escaped the fire, are still standing ; but the only place in theCrimea retaining its Oriental aspect is Bakhchi- Sara'i, or the "Palace of Gardens,"consisting of a long street south-west of Simferopol, winding through a limestonegorge along the banks of a rivulet, which flows to the Euxine about 18miles farther west.Khersonesus Point, at the south-western extremity of the Crimea, and almostsi parated from the rest of the peninsula by a deep inlet, is at once the scene ofHellenic legend, of Greek culture, and of one of the most sanguinary sieges ofmodern times. Here, according to some authorities, stood the Scythian templeof Diana, in whose honour the priestess Iphigenia immolated seafarers stranded on.these inhospitable shores. Close by was the Heraclean colony of Kherson, aname changed by the Tatars to Sari-Kerman, when the fortress was removednorth-east to the neighbourhood of Sebastopol, whose modern ruins still minglewith Scythian and Greek remains. Farther cast is the port of Balaklava, thePalakion of Strabo, an inlet over half a mile long, nearly 700 feet wide, and ofsuch regular outlines that it looks like a floating dock excavated b}' the hand ofman in the live rock Balaklava is still peopled by Greeks.