308 
BY THE ISTHMUS OF PERECOP, 
CHAP. 
VIII. 
' * ' 
Marshal 
JTiberstein. 
another route, and to attempt a journey by land 
to Constantinople. For this purpose we dis- 
patched letters to our Ambassador at the Porte, 
requesting an escort of Janissaries to meet us 
at Yassy. The evening before we took our final 
leave of Ahnetchet was enlivened by the company 
and conversation of Marshal Biberstein, a literary 
friend of the Professor’s, who had been recently 
travelling along the Volga, the shores of the Cas- 
pian, and in Caucasus. He was two years an exile 
in the Isle of Taman, where he had amused him- 
self with the study of Botany, and the antiquities 
of the country. He brought several new plants 
to the Professor, and confirmed the observations 
we had before made upon the Cimmerian Bos- 
porus. We had, moreover, the satisfaction to 
find, that the map we had prepared to illustrate 
the antient geography of the Crimea agreed 
with his own observations upon that subject. 
In answer to our inquiries concerning the 
relative height of the Alps and the Caucasian 
chain of mountains, he said, that the Alps are 
no where so elevated; and mentioned Mount 
Chat' as being higher than Mont Blanc. Being 
(l) Now called Elborus by the Circassians, according to its antient 
name. It has two points at its summit; and is visible from the fortress 
of Stavrojmle, on the Caucasian line, a distance of three hundred versts. 
Its base descends into a swampy impassable plain, and this plain equals 
in elevation the tops of the neighbouring mountains. 
