230 
BALAC LAVA. 
chap, have no foreign commerce. The rest of their 
1 — v — ' shops were appropriated to the sale of the few 
Manners of necessaries required by the inhabitants; who 
the 1 eopk. geeme( j t0 j ea( j an j t p e pf e> smo ] c i n g j taking 
coffee, chewing tobacco or opium, lounging about 
the streets, or playing at chess or at draughts, 
in the coffee-houses, or before the doors of their 
dwellings. We observed a game here which 
was quite new to us : the Greeks call it Man- 
gala. We saw it afterwards in Constantinople. 
It is played with a board having two rows of 
parallel partitions: into each of these was placed 
a certain number of small shells, such as the 
natives of Guinea use for money 1 . 
We found it necessary to leave our carriage 
at Balaclava , in order to visit the celebrated 
Valley of Baidar. The passage is performed on 
horseback, over high mountains, covered with 
wood to their summits, and having more of the 
Apennine than of the Alpine character: the 
mountains which border the coast of the Crimea 
partake of neither ; they cannot be said to re- 
semble those of any other country. 
(1) The Cyprcca moneta of Linnieus. 
