CAPE AIYA. Looking North, Towards Balaklava.
This stupendous Cape, distant a few miles to the south-east of Balaklava, is visible to ships coming from Constantinople long before it is possible to determine the precise position of that harbour, whose entrance scarcely makes a perceptible chasm in the rugged line of cliifs which form this portion of the coast range. The sheer walls of rock descend from an enormous height almost perpendicularly to the sea, and stern indeed and cruel is their aspect to the children of the deep, when the strong wind comes from the south, rejoicing in its might of destruction, and drives the troubled waves with their hapless burden fast upon that iron barrier. Gloomy looks Cape Aiya when the dank Black Sea fog clings round its summit, and the bright light of heaven is obscured by cloud-drifts; but when the warm sunbeams play upon the verdant undergrowth which here and there clothes its sides, and the variegated surface of the rocks reflects their rays in tints which Iris might envy, the impressions of terror and desolation are forgotten in the surpassing beauty of the scene. The artist has chosen to portray the promontory in one of its more modified aspects — "half sunshine, half tears," and the fitful light which gleams over land and sea comes from a heaven which has no menace for the stately craft in the offing.
This drawing marks the entrance to the harbour of Balaklava, with the familiar Genoese fort on its right, and between the ship and the promontory, almost hidden by the rain, the extreme limit of the defences of Balaklava to the right, the hill generally known as the Crow's Nest, on which the Marines and Kifles were encamped.
PLATE LVIII.
THE VALLEY OF BAIDAR,
From near Petroski's Villa, Looking East. The reader who is acquainted with the long-waged and still undecided dispute as to the beauty of the Valley of Baidar, and whose wanderings have not led him into this portion of the Crimea, Avill be grateful for the excellent opportunity which Mr. Simpson has afforded him of determining for himself
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the merits of the question. No book of travels in the Crimea with which we are acquainted fails to record the impressions of its author as to a scene, a visit to which has now become a traditional obligation of the tribe; and no two descriptions agree with each other. "Even the vales of Caucasus," says Pallas, " far surpass this celebrated spot." Clarke considers that it will not bear comparison with many of the beautiful scenes in Switzerland, nor even with those in Norway and Sweden. Koch declares that the heights which inclose it are unromantic and tame, while Demidoff as roundly asserts that it owes its character of stern beauty to the lofty and majestic mountains which surround it. Scott takes Clarke to task for his comparison, which he declares untenable, and, denying that any of the countries mentioned by the Doctor contain any valley at all resembling that of Baidar, pronounces the latter "beautiful"; and Oliphant professes himself disappointed with the Crimean Tempe, and half hints that ho considers the Tauric Arcadia as a designation more flattering than just.
In this distressing conflict of opinion we are averse to hazarding any judgment of our own, and shall therefore confine ourselves to an enumeration of the features of the landscape which the artist has deemed most appropriate to the illustration of Ids view of the subject.