310 THIRD JOURNEY TO THE CAUCASUS. 



was favoured by splendid weather, and permitted us to 

 admire at leisure the magnificent coast-scenery, which 

 stretches from the steep slopes of the southern table- 

 land of the Crimea to the sea. Much reminded us 

 here of the Riviera, indeed there were many points of 

 the Crimean coast, whose superiority we were obliged 

 to allow. The situation of the country -palaces Livadia 

 and Alupka, belonging to the Imperial family, as well 

 as that of many another residence of Russian notables, 

 is beautiful in the extreme. There was wanting, how- 

 ever, the fresh pulsating life of the Riviera, which so 

 considerably heightens the charms of its scenery and 

 climate. The climate of the southern Crimean coast 

 is pleasant and free from fever , and the means of 

 communication, becoming continually more rapid and 

 convenient, will doubtless therefore soon bring it a 

 great accession of tourists. On the other hand it is 

 impossible to speak as favourably of the climate of 

 the incomparably more beautiful and grander eastern 

 side of the high Caucasus, for there almost everywhere 

 malignant intermittent fevers prevail, and the prospect 

 of medical science overcoming this great plague of 



O o I o 



humanity appears as yet to be very slight. 



It was an interesting coincidence, that the glad 

 tidings of the conquest of one of the greatest scourges 

 of mankind, consumption, by the discoveries of Koch, 

 reached me in this third journey to the Caucasus, in 

 the very regions where so many years before the 

 theory had obtruded itself upon me of the excitation 

 of climatic fever by microscopic life in the blood. 



