CRASNOI LAIS. 19 



before our next start. Why a yemstchik's fee, which 

 is invariably spent in nips of vodka (unsweetened 

 gin) should be called tea- money, has always ap- 

 peared to me an unanswerable enigma. Tainan 

 hardly deserves a description, even from so humble 

 a pen as mine. It has a jetty and a telegraph 

 station ; is the post from which a few cattle are 

 shipped to Kertch, and to which a few travellers to 

 the Caucasus come from the same place. Once it 

 was a large and flourishing city, twin sister to 

 Panticapaeum (Kertch) on the other side of the 

 straits ; now it is a collection of miserable hovels, 

 surrounded by mud knee-deep in winter and storms 

 of dust in summer, with an odour of fish and the 

 vodka shop in all seasons. There are near to 

 Taman some large oil-works, from which naphtha 

 is said to be extracted in large quantities. It may 

 be so, but I hear that their original owner is bank- 

 rupt, and he was a Russian ; so that as the present 

 proprietors are Americans, and as such less likely 

 to be able to protect themselves from local frauds, I 

 should not feel inclined to invest my bottom dollar 

 in the Taman Oil Company. 



Such a wretched place did we find Taman, that 

 we were glad to leave it and commence our journey 

 inland at once. In describing a journey the 

 traveller as a rule looks to the scenery to supply at 

 least a very large portion of his description ; what 

 then shall the luckless traveller do, who has 



c 2 



