204 
CHAP. 
V. 
' — * — 
FROM THE CAPITAL OF THE CRIMEA, 
various directions. From these caverns, a fine 
* prospect of the Valley of InJcerman appears 
through the wide open arches, together with 
heaps of ruins upon the opposite side of the 
river. The principal cave seems to have been 
the church. We found several stone coffins 
cut in the rock: these had all been opened. 
We noticed some Greek inscriptions above them, 
but the characters were too faint and too im- 
perfectly engraven to be legible. The difficulty 
of copying or deciphering them was increased 
by the obscurity of the caverns. It was now 
evening; and night coming on, the full moon 
rose in great splendour over the long Valley of 
Inkerman, illuminating a landscape, which, as 
it was seen through the arches of these gloomy 
chambers, is not to be described. Upon the 
opposite side of the river, excavations were 
still more frequent, and somewhat farther from 
the bay. Crossing an antient bridge, whose 
fair-proportioned arch, and massive super- 
structure, indicated the masonry of some remote 
age, we found the caverns to be so numerous, 
that they occupied one entire side of a con- 
siderable mountain : upon its summit were the 
towers and battlements of a very large fortress, 
supposed to have belonged to the Genoese, but 
perhaps originally part of the fortifications 
erected by Diophantus, one of the generals of 
