Natural Productions, atid History of the Crimea. 233 

 Darius as the epoch of the establishment of foreign colonies 

 in the Crimea. In the year 480 before the vulgar sera, the 

 Archoe-Anaktides, aborigines of Mitylene, founded the 

 kingdom of Bosphorus, from which future sovereigns ex- 

 tended their possessions. This country, successively under 

 the dominion of the Scythians, the Sarmatians and the 

 Taurians, was entirely conquered in tlie year before Christ 

 82, by Mithridates king of Pontus. Sixteen years after- 

 wards, the defeat of this prince placed the Crimea ia the 

 hands of the Romans, who left Pharnaces, the rebel son of 

 Mithridates, on the throne of Bosphorus. In the tirst 

 century of our sera it was invaded by the Alains, who were 

 supplanted in their turn by the Scythians, then known by 

 the name of Goths. These having been conquered by the 

 Huns, formed a distinct state in the mountains of Kertch, 

 the kings whereof were Christians. We may observe, by 

 the way, that Christianity was received in the Crimea under 

 Dioclesian and Coastantin. At length, at the end of the 

 4th century, the kingdom of Bosphorus disappeared, and 

 about the beginning of the 3th the power of the Huns was 

 annihilated by the Hungarians, who took possession of the 

 southern coast, and their descendants wandered a long time 

 by the name of Roultziagres and Oultzaingourcs, and were 

 in 679 subjugated by the Chazares, to whom the mountain 

 Golhs and those of the Greek cities also became tri- 

 butary. In 840 the emperor Theophilus, as sovereign, 

 erected a province under the name of Cherson. At this 

 epoch the Jews became very numerous in that province. 

 After a variety of revolutions the Crimea came into the 

 hands of the Genoese. About 1204 the soudagh or so- 

 vereicn of the Crimea renounced his allegiance to the tin-one 

 of Constantino])le. In short, after having been alternately 

 in the possession of the Genoese, the Venetians and the 

 Turks, the Crimea was finally wrested from the latter by 

 the Russians in 1783, after a war which had lasted 46 

 years. 



M. de Rcuilly afterwards develops the state of the Cilmea 

 under the dlifcrcnt governments, and particularly under the 

 Khans and the Russians, lie describes tlu- j)hysicigiu)niy, 



the 



