A favourable breeze soon carried us within sight of the coast of the Crimea. The air was balmy, the sea was bright, though it had no longer the intense blueness that is so characteristic of the Bosphorus and the Mediterranean; the atmosphere, also, had a certain mistiness about it more akin to northern regions. We were not very far from the land, and could see that the country was flat and barren. In the far distance we could trace the faint outlines of a range of hills.
CHAPTER VII.
EUPATORIA.
We coasted on, the shore becoming lower and lower, until at length nothing was to be seen but an arid, sandy plain stretching away for miles. Not a tree or house broke its dull uniformity.
In the midst of this gloomy desert is Eupatoria. It would be difficult to find a more wretched-looking little place. The town consists of a tumble-down mosque, a couple of Christian churches, a caravanserai for strangers, and a few low miserable houses. There is also a small wooden landing-place, and a few huts, like sentry-boxes, scattered along the shore.
These huts, however, make the fortune, such as it is, of Eupatoria. They are the famous mud baths well known in the Crimea, and during the summer are resorted to, from all parts of Southern Russia, by persons afflicted with skin diseases.
There is one sad malady for which these baths are peculiarly efficacious. This complaint consists in the skin becoming so thin that at times the slightest exertion may cause hæmorrhage to take place from any or all parts of the body; a wasting consumption being thus produced that usually ends fatally.
The baths at Eupatoria have effected some wonderful cures, and their reputation is of course increasing.
The patient lies for some hours every day in the soft, healing muddy water, which, by degrees, makes a sort of artificial coating by leaving the sediment upon the body. The skin is thus protected until it can regain its proper health and thickness. We afterwards met a Russian in Sevastopol who had been quite cured by this singular remedy.