448 RUSSIA IN EUROPE. 



their honesty, simple habits, endurance, and perseverance. The name of Kara'im, 

 or Kara'/ f es — that is, " Readers " — derives from the constant study of Holy Writ, 

 the commentaries on which they reject. Hence they hold aloof from the other 

 Jews, although much esteemed by them for the care with which they have pre- 

 served the old doctrines. Many believe them to be the Khazars, who were partly 

 converted to Judaism, and who dwelt on the Volga, in the Crimea, and at the 

 foot of the Caucasus. They may have also become intermingled with the Krim 

 Tatars, to whom they have been assimilated in speech and costume, and whom 

 they resemble more than they do the Jews themselves. 



Topography. 



Perekop, or the " Cutting," the Or or TJr of the Tatars, the town guarding 

 the entrance to the Crimea at its narrowest approach, occupies the site of the 

 ancient Taphros, whose defences were restored by Mengli Ghireï in the fifteenth 

 century. -These lines were again replaced by fresh works and modern redoubts 

 erected during the Crimean war. But the commerce of the isthmus is not 

 carried on at Perekop, but at the large Armenian settlement of Annamkiij 

 Bazar, 3 miles farther south. In the steppes stretching south of the isthmus, 

 and washed by the " Dead Sea " on the west and the " Putrid Sea " on the east, 

 there are no towns until we reach the ancient Eapatoria, on the west coast, named 

 from a fortress founded in honour of Mithridates Eupator, which, however, seems 

 to have been situated still farther south, on the site of the present Sebastopol. 



Simferopol, capital of the Crimea and of the government of Taurida, occupies a 

 central position in the fertile valley of the Salgir, at the northern issue of the pass 

 affording the readiest approach to the south coast east of the Chatir Dagh. Here was 

 the old Tatar town of Ak-Mechet, or the " White Mosque," burnt by the Russians 

 in 1736, and in 1784 rebuilt under the Greek name of Sympheropolis. A few 

 Tatar structures, which escaped the fire, are still standing ; but the only place in the 

 Crimea retaining its Oriental aspect is BakJtchi-Sarai, or the " Palace of Gardens," 

 consisting of a long street south-west of Simferopol, winding through a lime- 

 stone gorge along the banks of a rivulet, which flows to the Euxine about 18 

 miles farther west. 



Khersonesus Point, at the south-western extremity of the Crimea, and almost 

 separated from the rest of (he peninsula by a deep inlet, is at once the scene of 

 Hellenic legend, of Greek culture, and of one of the most sanguinary sieges of 

 modern times. Here, according to some authorities, stood the Scythian temple 

 of Diana, in whose honour the priestess Iphigenia immolated seafarers stranded on 

 these inhospitable shores. Close by was the Heraclean colony of Kherson, a 

 name changed by the Tatars to Sarî-Kerman, when the fortress was removed 

 north-east to the neighbourhood of Sebastopol, whose modern ruins still mingle 

 with Scythian and Greek remains. Farther east is the port of Balaklava, the 

 Palakion of Strabo, an inlet over half a mile long, nearly 700 feet wide, and of 

 such regular outlines that it looks like a floating dock excavated by the hand of 

 man in the live rock. Balaklava is still peopled by Greeks. 



