A Visit to the Crimea—The Porter with the Big Books—The Danger of Siberia—Our Entry into Sevastopol—Terrible Reminiscences of the Crimean War—How we shirked the Cemetery—The Great Dock-Yard of Sevastopol—We Visit a Remarkable Gunboat—What we saw Below-Deck—The Story that our Landlord Told—An Enterprising Tartar—The “Doubter” offers an opinion—How the “Judge” stole a Newspaper—Adventures by the Way—The “Doubter” gets into Trouble—We Fly to the Rescue—Eccentricities of a Selfish Man—We Rise and Depart.
WE went to Odessa, as I said, solely to escape the quarantine on entering Turkey. Being there—less than two hundred miles from Sevastopol—we could not resist the temptation to pay a flying visit to the Crimea.
We reached Odessa in the morning, and found that a steamer left at two o’clock in the afternoon for the ports of the Crimea, and as soon as we had passed the formalities of the Custom-House and the police—no trifling matters—we went to the steamer in question. And, by the way, they put us through very cautiously, and also very politely, when we entered the empire.
Three officers of the police, followed by a porter with an armful of big books, came on board the Metternich, the steamer from Galatz, as soon as she entered the port. They took seats at the cabin table, spread out the passports which had been collected by the purser of the steamer, and then began work.
They disposed of two or three persons, and then came to my case.
“Have you ever been in Russia before?” said one of the officials in French. "Yes,” I answered.
“When was the last time?”
“In 1867.”
“Where were you?” and he looked at me very attentively.
“In a great many places,” I answered. “In Moscow, Petersburg, Warsaw, Kazan, and in Eastern and Western Siberia.