NIKOLAYEV— ODESSA. 



313 



situation of Nikolayev rendered it more suitable for constructive works, and here 

 have gradually sprung- up vast establishments of every sort connected with the 

 building and equipment of the navy. This Russian Portsmouth, with its long 

 broad dusty streets stretching far into the steppe, consists of a central quarter, 

 round which are grouped the various naval and military suburbs, while the banks 

 of the Ingul are lined with wharfs, slips, graving docks, ship-building yards, 

 floating docks, cannon foundries, workshops, employing thousands of hands, and 

 turning out gun carriuges, boilers, iron plates, and everything connected with the 

 armament of the largest ironclads in the service. Fortifications have been raised 

 at all points round the city, and the lines have been extended along both sides o^ 

 the Bug, far below its junction with the Ingul. But the approaches are bad, the 



Fig. 164. — Kherson and the Lower DNitPER. 

 Scale 1 : 375,000. 



E of P 



n L ofG 



Mounds. Fai'msteads. 



Sheep-folds. 

 5 Miles. 



depth of water at the bar being only from 20 to 24 feet, preventing the access 

 of fully laden vessels of the largest tonnage. Nikolayev is also an important 

 trading place, in this respect succeeding the old settlement of Olbia from Miletus, 

 whose site has been discovered at the Sto-Mogil, or " Hundred Tombs," at the 

 junction of the Bug and Dnieper limans below the town. Although itir behind 

 Odessa in its direct import business, it ships considerable quantities of cereals in 

 favourable seasons, and is the head-quarters of several steamship companies. An 

 outport of Nikolayev is the seaport of Ochakov, or Kara Kerman, the " Black 

 Fortress," situated on the north side of the liman, on the site of an old Greek fort. 

 But the great emporium of South Russia is Odessa, situated right on the coast, 

 and not, like Kherson or Nikolayev, at the mouth of a large river, giving access to 

 the interior. Here are nothing but intermittent steppe streams flowing to the 



