The mountains of the Crimea are covered with dense forests and wild flowers grow there more abundantly than in any other part of Europe. The woods and meadows are carpeted with white and purple violets. The tulip, the veronica, the lily of the valley, the geranium, sweet peas, and other flowering plants reach perfection in a wild state, and are so plentiful that nobody thinks of cultivating them. In the northern part of the Crimea are salt lakes from which a hundred million pounds of salt are harvested annually by evaporation, and distributed throughout Russia, bringing much profit to the operators, and a large revenue to the government. The coast abounds in a great variety of fish, which furnish another profitable occupation for the people, and are shipped by train loads into the interior of Russia every day.
In ancient times the Crimea produced vast quantities of corn, which was exported to Greece and Rome and other
Mediterranean countries, but agriculture has been supplanted by horticulture, and the sunny slopes of the peninsula are covered with orchards and vineyards and truck gardens. The Crimea is famous for wines, although they are too sweet and heavy for the American taste. Fruits of every kind, peaches, apples, pears, plums, gooseberries, strawberries, raspberries, and currants, walnuts, almonds, chestnuts, hazel nuts, melons, and vegetables of every variety are produced in enormous quantities and shipped to northern Russia. The Crimea is the hothouse, the conservatory of the empire, and supplies early vegetables to the tables of the rich residents of St. Petersburg and Moscow, as the truck forms of Florida provide for those of our northern cities.
The largest part of the population of the Crimea are Tartars — Crim-Tartars they are called, to distinguish them from other representatives of that race — Crim being the Russian form of the word Crimea. They are Mohammedans and have a streak of the savage left in them. No Tartar was ever thoroughly civilized. They resemble the Sicilians in character and habits — in their passionate natures, their jealous dispositions, their vendetta and love of revenge, but they are a sober, industrious, generoushearted people, whose most sacred fetich is hospitality. They never turn a stranger, even a tramp, from the door. They are always courteous, always deferential and expect their kindness to be returned in good faith.
The Crim-Tartars have a genius for gardening. They love plants and trees and flowers. Whatever they sow brings forth a thousand-fold. They tend the orchards and the gardens of the peninsula, raise the fruit and make the wines, carry on the fisheries, furnish household servants for the hotels, boarding-houses and villas, and leave shopkeeping and trading to the Armenians and the Jews, who are numerous there as everywhere else in southern Russia, and control financial and mercantile affairs.
The Crimea is a fascinating field for historians and archaeologists, for its original inhabitants furnished much material for mythology, and their remains abound in various parts of the little peninsula. The Cimmerians, the first inhabitants referred to in history, were known to Homer and Herodotus, and their gloomy situation is described in the "Odyssey" xi, 15:
** There in a lonely land and gloomy cells The dusky nation of Cimmeria dwells; Unhappy race! Whom endless night invades* Clouds the dull air and wraps them round in shades.**
The Scythians, an Asiatic tribe, drove the Cimmerians out of the Crimea in 680 B.C. The latter crossed the Black Sea and settled along the coast of Asia Minor. Thence they spread over Europe and were the founders of three races — the Welsh, the Milesians, and the Goths. Welsh names abound throughout the Crimea, and in the moimtains of Wales the old families are known as Cymry.
The Strait of Kertch, which connects the Sea of Azov with the Euxine, or Black Sea, is labelled the "Cimmerian Bosphorus" on all the early maps. The word Bosphorus means, literally, "the passage of an ox," and is an ancient designation of all streams and water-courses which will permit an ox to cross them by wading or swimming.
The port of Theodosia, the first important town on the