Down the face of the hill a cluster of grave-stones marks the modern burial-ground, the connecting link between the earliest and latest generations of the dead.
Lower down the hill, to the left of the tomb of Stamkoffsky, is the ill-fated Museum, a handsome building of the Doric order, which has six pillars in front and nine on each side, and is approached from below by a splendid flight of stone steps.
This building formerly contained a valuable collection of specimens of ancient sculpture and architecture, sarcophagi, vases in the Etruscan style, vessels of glass remarkable for their lightness and beauty, ancient inscriptions, and fibulae, rings, and chains, principally obtained from the surrounding tumuli. When Mr. Simpson passed through the town the whole of these precious objects had been either carried off or smashed to atoms, with the exception of a few blocks of ancient sculpture, which had been found too heavy to remove.
" The town itself," writes that gentleman, " has been compared by many to Malta, from the fine architectui'al appearance of nearly every house; pillars and balustrades are very common, and few houses but have got a cornice and friezes to the windows, in the Greek taste. Here and there you find something that has an Eastern appearance about it; the arches in these cases have a Moorish turn.
" The gateway at the old church of Yenikale is arabesque, and very handsome, although it is not new."
The foreground of the drawing is occupied by a fatigue party of the 98rd Highlanders and a few Marines, some of whom are leaning against one of the now celebrated arabas, or baggage-carts common to the country, which is conducted by a Tartar, utterly unconscious that he is standing for his portrait. In the distance are the heights between Kertch and Kamish-Biirun, over w'hich the English troops passed on their march; they are thickly dotted with the tumuli which form the distinguishing feature of the country.
H t/) < m
UJ X H
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
An extract from Dr. Clarke, describing the most remarkable of these mounds, the so-called " Tomb of Mithridates," will not, we trust, be unacceptable at the close of this somewhat extended notice.
"It is," he writes, "perhaps a Milesian work; but its height and size are so remarkable that it is scarcely possible to believe it to be the result of human labour... The Tahtars call it Altyn Oho; they have a tradition that it contains a treasure, guarded b}^ a virgin, who here spends her nights in lamentations. It stands upon the most elevated spot in this part of the Crimea, and is visible for many miles round. One thing concerning this tumulus is very remarkable, and may confirm the notion entertained of its artificial origin. It is placed exactly upon the valliun, or inner barrier, of the Bosphorian empire.... Another circumstance is also worthy of notice: beyond the vallnm, to the west, there are no tumuli, although they are so numerous upon its eastern side.