On a change of Climate. 131 



of poets and historians, many have been anxious to suppose that the 

 peculiarity they describe, has long since ceased to exist ; and they 

 have deduced from this supposed difference between the ancient and 

 modern climate of Scythia, a proof that by the destruction of forests, 

 the draining of marshes, and the triumphant progress of agriculture, 

 the temperature, not only of certain districts, but of the earth itself, 

 has been improved.* But how far all or any of these changes may 

 be able to produce effects so extensive, as it may reasonably admit 

 of doubt, so it is in the present instance superfluous to inquire ; since 

 in Scythia these causes have never operated, and no apparent melio- 

 ration of the climate has taken place. The country still continues, 

 for the most part, in the wild state painted by Herodotus and Strabo 5 

 and all the countries bordering on the Euxine Sea are still subject to 

 an annual severity of winter, of which (though in a far higher lati- 

 tude,) the inhabitants of our own country can hardly form an idea. 



" That water freezes when poured on the ground ; that the ground 

 in winter is muddy only where a fire is kindled ; that copper kettles 

 are burst by the freezing of their contents ; that asses, being animals 

 impatient of cold, are found here neither in a wild nor tame state, — 

 are circumstances no less characteristic of modern Scythia, than of 

 Scythia as described by Herodotug and Strabo.f Nor do I ques- 

 tion the authority of the latter, when he assures us that the Bospho- 

 rus has been sometimes so firmly frozen, that there has been a beaten 

 and miry high-way between Panticapasum and Phanagoria ; or that 

 one of the generals of Mithridates gained there, during the winter, a 

 victory with his cavalry, where, the preceding summer, his fleet had 

 been successful. In the neighborhood of the latter of these towns, 

 by the Russians since called Tmutaracan, a Slavonic inscription has 

 been discovered, which records the measurement of these straits over 

 the ice, by command of the Russian prince Gleb, in the year 1068. 

 But such events must, from the force of the current, have at all 

 times, been of rare occurrence. By the best information which I 

 Could procure on the spot, though the straits are regularly so far 

 blocked up by ice as to prevent navigation, there is generally a free 

 passage for the stream unfrozen. Across the harbor of Phanagoria, 

 however, sledges are driven with safety ; and on the other side of 

 the Crimea, a Russian ofiicer assured me that he had driven over 



* Howard's Theory of the Earth. t Herod. Melpom. 28— Straho, L. vij. 



