The peninsula having been finally subjugated, the Greeks were formed into a regimental colony, with the town and territory of Balaclava for their residence. They now number 600 fighting men, who are only employed in guarding the coasts. The colonist is only liable to be called out for active service during four months in the year; the other eight he has at his own disposal for the cultivation of his lands. Each soldier has twenty-eight rubles yearly pay, and finds his own equipment.
The day after our arrival at Balaclava we made a boating excursion to examine the geology of the coast, and landed in a beautiful little cove lined with flowering trees and shrubs. On our return the boatmen made themselves coronals of hawthorn and blossoming apple sprays, and decorated the boat with garlands of the same, and in this festive style we made our entry into Balaclava. In our poetic enthusiasm as we looked on the lovely sky, the placid sea, and the Greek mariners, who thus retained on a foreign shore, and after the lapse of so many centuries, the cheerful customs of their ancestors, we could not help comparing ourselves to one of the numerous deputations that used every year to enter the Pyræus, with their vessels' prows festooned with flowers, to take part in the brilliant festivals of Athens.
We bade adieu that day to our excellent friend M. Taitbout de Marigny, who continued his cruise to Ialta, where we were again to meet him. We set out for the convent of St. George, our minds filled with classical reminiscences, which fortified us to endure the horrible bumping of our pereclatnoi. This vehicle is a sort of low four-wheeled cart, so narrow as barely to accommodate two persons, who have nothing to sit on but boxes and packages laid on a great heap of hay. It is no easy matter to keep one's balance on such a seat, especially when the frail equipage is galloped along from post to post at the full speed of three stout horses. Yet this is the manner in which most Russians travel, and often for a week together, day and night.
The road from Balaclava to the monastery presents no striking features; it runs over a vast plateau, as barren as the steppes. A little before sunset we were quite close to the convent, but saw nothing indicative of its existence, and were, therefore, not a little surprised when the driver jumped down and told us to alight. We thought he was making game of us, when he led the way into an arched passage, but when we reached the further end a cry of admiration escaped our lips, as we beheld the monastery with its cells backed against the rock, its green-domed church, its terraces and blooming gardens, suspended several hundred feet above the sea. Long did we remain wrapt in contemplation of the magic effect produced by man's labour on a scene that looked in its savage and contorted aspect as if it had been destined only to be the domain of solitude.
The Russian and Greek monasteries are far from displaying the monumental appearance of the western convents. They consist only of a group of small houses of one story, built without symmetry, and with nothing about them denoting the austere habits of a religious community. Those poetic souls who find such food for meditation in the long galleries of the cloisters, could not easily be reconciled to such a disregard for form. The monks received us not like Christians, but like downright pagans. The bishop, for whom we had letters, happening to be absent, we fell into the hands of two or three surly-looking friars, whose dirty dress and red faces indicated habits any thing but monastic. They confined us in a disgustingly filthy hole, where a few crazy chairs, two or three rough planks on tressels, and a nasty candle stuck in a bottle, were all the accommodation we obtained from their munificence. Our dragoman could not even get coals to boil the kettle without paying for it double what it was worth. When we remonstrated with the monks their invariable answer was, that they were not bound to provide us with any thing but the bare furniture of the table. Such was their notion of the duties of hospitality.
With our bones aching from the pereclatnoi we were obliged to content ourselves with a few cups of tea by way of supper, and to lie down on the execrable planks they had the assurance to call a bed. Fortunately, the bishop returned next day, and we got a cleaner room, mattresses, pillows, plenty to eat, and more respectful treatment on the part of the monks; but all this could not reconcile us to men who had such a curious way of practising the precepts of the gospel. The few days we spent among them were enough to enable us to judge of the degree of ignorance and moral degradation in which they live. Religion which, in default of instruction, ought at least to mould their souls to the Christian virtues, and to love of their neighbours, has no influence over them. They do not understand it, and their gross instincts find few impediments in the statutes of their order. Sloth, drunkenness, and fanaticism, stand them instead of faith, love, and charity.
The great steepness of this part of the coast renders the descent to the sea extremely difficult. We tried it, however, and with a good deal of hard work we scrambled down to the beach, which is here only a few yards wide. Magnificent volcanic rocks form in this place a natural colonnade, the base of which is constantly washed by the sea, whilst every craggy point is tenanted by marine birds, the only living creatures to be seen.
On our return to the convent we found it full of beggars who had come for the annual festival that was to be held on the day but one following. Cake and fruit-sellers, gipsies and Tatars, had set up their booths and tents on the plateau; every thing betokened that the solemnity would be very brilliant, but we had not the curiosity to wait for it. We set out that evening for Stavropol, glad to get away from a convent in which hospitality is not bestowed freely, but sold.
On leaving the monastery we proceeded first of all in the direction of Cape Khersonese, the most western point of this classic land, where flourished, for more than twelve centuries, the celebrated colony of Kherson, founded by the Heracleans 600 years B. C. At present the only remains of all its greatness are a few heaps of shapeless stones; and strange to relate, the people who put the last hand to the destruction of whatever had escaped the barbarian invasions and the Mussulman sway, was the same whose conversion to Christianity in the person of the Grand Duke Vladimir, was celebrated by Kherson in 988. When the Russians entered the Crimea some considerable architectural remains were still standing, among which were the principal gate of the town and its two towers, and a large portion of the walls; besides which there were shafts and capitals of columns, numerous inscriptions and three churches of the Lower Empire, half buried under the soil. But Muscovite vandalism quickly swept away all these remains. A quarantine establishment for the new port of Sevastopol was constructed on the site of the ancient Heraclean town, and all the existing vestiges of its monuments were rapidly demolished and carried away stone by stone; and but for the direct interference of the Emperor Alexander, who caused a few inscriptions to be deposited in the museum of Nicolaief, there would be nothing remaining in our day to attest the existence of one of the most opulent cities of the northern coasts of the Black Sea.
At a short distance from Cape Khersonese begins that succession of ports which render this point of the Crimea so important to Russia; one of them is Sevastopol, whence the imperial fleet commands the whole of the Black Sea, and incessantly threatens the existence of the sultan's empire. Between Cape Khersonese and the Sevastopol roads which comprise three important ports, there are six distinct bays running inland parallel to each other. First come the Double Bay (Dvoinaia) and the Bay of the Cossack (Cozatchaia), between which the Heracleans founded their first establishment, no trace of which now exists. Then comes the Round Bay (Kruglaia), that of the Butts (Strelezkaia), and that of the Sands (Pestchannaia). These five are all abandoned, and are only used by vessels driven by stress of weather to seek shelter in them. It was in the space between the Bay of the Sands and that more to the west where the quarantine is established, that the celebrated Kherson once stood.