From explanation to explanation it turned out that the box had never reached the widow's hands when first sent that morning. She remembered some time ago having given orders that no anonymous presents should be taken in. None of Samuel's secret gifts, then, had been received. Oh, misery! An investigation took place in the house. The foxy-faced footman confessed that he had taken advantage of his mistress's order to dispose of all the anonymous presents for his own advantage, and that the box of bonbons had been sold for a trifle to Towsler, the banker, whom "foxy-face" had met by chance that morning, while going to his usual receiver, with the box in his hand, and who needed a new year's gift for his sister's children, the little Pelicans. So "foxy-face" was dismissed from his place, and Samuel Browser went home (with the bonbon-box, by the way, in his hand) and took to his bed, and " Samuel and I" became the lawful possessor of the box by donation from his brother, who would "look on it no more;" and of the bonbons he made sundry little packages, with which he delighted sundry little hearts of sundry little friends who loved the simple-minded Jacob; and the lid, with the pink and green shepherdess, was kept by him in a drawer as a memento of the great Samuel's escape from the "lottery" he dreaded for him-" serve him right!"-and-and-and so ended the New Year's Day Adventures of the Box of Bonbons. IN-KERMAN, THE CITY OF CAVES. PASSING up the bay of Sebastopol, eastward of or beyond the city and harbour, a little inlet called Careening Bay is passed to the right, beyond which are some ancient grottos and a chapel cut in the rock, now used as a powder-magazine, while all along the shore runs the aqueduct which bears the waters of the Black River to the docks, and which is here and there supported by graceful arcades. To the left is the navy baking-house, in a ravine between white cliffs, then the West Inkerman Lighthouse, at an elevation of 413 feet, visible twenty-eight miles out at sea, beyond which again is the East Inkerman Light, 6134 feet above the sea, and seen at a distance of thirty-three miles. The Tchernaya Retchka, or Black River, at the point where it flows into the bay, runs through a marshy flat of its own depositing, covered with a rank vegetation. This wide extent of rushes and sedges abounds with tortoises, which the French are so skilled in converting into palatable soup, and which plunge from the banks as the splashing of any passing oars disturbs their slumbers, while fish are said to rise to the surface in swarms to devour the seeds of water-melons thrown out to them. A little beyond this, and just before the valley narrows, is the bridge across which the Russian hosts retreated in great haste after the battle of the 5th of November, and were trampled under or tumbled over the sides by the princes of the house of Romanov-still more impetuous in their flight than their recreant soldiery. The valley is narrowed at this point-which is pictured forth in a neat vignette in Mr. Oliphant's book-by two approaching rocky hills, which terminate in cliffs or precipices, rising abruptly from the vale below. To the right, the aqueduct is carried through these rocky hills by a tunnel three hundred yards long, close by which are the great limestone quarries, whence most of the materials for the immense works of Sebastopol were procured. To the left and on the crest of the hills are some fragments of walls, the sole remains of a castle which formerly crowned these heights. Such a castle is said to have been first erected at this point by Diophantes, a general of Mithridates Eupator, King of Pontus, who called it, after his sovereign, Eupatorium-a name which has since been transferred to a town on the north side of the bay of Kalamita, just as the name of the city of the Dioscuri (Castor and Pollux)-the Sebastopolis of Arrianone of the most commercial cities in the Euxine, and situate about twothirds of a degree north of the Phasis, was transferred to the Ctenus of the ancients, and Ak-tiyar, or White City of the Turks. The aid of the king of Pontus had been sought for by the Heraclean colonists of Khersonesus against Skilosous, the king of the TauroScythians; and recognising the strength of the position, as also the importance of defending the extremity of the wall, which, running from the Portus Symbolorum (Balaclava) to the bay of Sebastopol, cuts off the Heracleontic from the Tauric Khersonesus, he built a fortress on the edge of the rock. It has been supposed by some travellers that these ruins are the remains of Ctenus, but Dr. Clarke has long ago shown that the whole of the roads and harbour of Sebastopol were comprised in Ctenus, as described by Strabo. The same site became afterwards, under the name of Theodorus, the seat of a little Greek principality dependent on the Lower Empire, and it preserved that name till taken by Muhammad II., 1475, when the site became picturesquely designated by the Turks Inkerman, from In," cavern, and Kerman," fortress. As some parts of the masonry have the appearance of much greater age than others, it may be fairly presumed that portions of the citadel of Diophantes are still there. Indeed, it is reasonable to suppose, although the Turks, who preferring Ak-tiyar, allowed the fortress to crumble to ruin, that the castle was strongly built, and its different possessors never totally destroyed it. M. de Montpéreux, in his "Voyage Autour du Caucase," &c., a work of great research, which gained the prize of the Geographical Society in Paris, in 1848, gives the translation of an inscription which he had seen, whereon the name of "Alexis, Sovereign of Theodorus, and the neighbouring country of the sea," is mentioned, and which bears the date of A.D. 1427. It appears from this that the statement made by the Rev. Mr. Elliott (Travels, vol. i. p. 324) and others, that there are indications of this fortress having, like the neighbouring castle at Balaclava, been repaired and occupied by the Genoese, is inaccurate. According to Bronovius also, Greek inscriptions and other sculptures still remained in the time of the Turks. The Greek princes, Mr. Scott justly remarks ("The Baltic, Black Sea, and the Crimea," p. 286), appear to have left the Genoese unmolested; indeed, they were not strong enough to take up an offensive position against that people, who were therefore benefited by such industrious and peaceable neighbours, especially as they followed agricultural pursuits, and did not interfere with commerce, which was the monopoly of the adventurous Italians. The cliffs below the fortress of Eupatorium, afterwards Theodorus, and those on the opposite side of the valley where the hill is tunnelled, are completely dotted over with excavated grottos of various shapes and sizes, and which have been applied to different uses by different possessors. The observations and researches of De Montpéreux fully establish the fact that these mountain caves, from whence Inkerman derives its name, were the work of the Tauro-Scythians, and existed before the Heraclean colonists of Khersonesus called on Mithridates for assistance against the aborigines, who are called Tauri by many writers; for example, by Ovid, who writes, Est locus in Scythia (Tauros discere priores) Pomponius Mela (lib. ii. cap. i.) calls them Taurici; but Pliny, Ptolemy, and Procopius, all call them Tauro-Scythæ. These Scythians of Tauris it was who first fixed their homes where eagles well might build their nests. About the middle of the first century after Christ, the Alains entered the Tauris and devastated the greater part of the country. They were followed by the Goths, who in their turn became masters of the peninsula. But far from abusing their victory, they blended their race with that of the vanquished, founded numerous colonies, and especially followed their natural bent for a sedentary life and rural occupations. In the year 375 the Huns came down from the heart of Asia to the Cimmerian Bosphorus, and the united colonies of Alains and Goths, who had successfully resisted the onslaught of the Sarmatians, were driven by these new invaders to the strong positions of their mountains. Now, as the limits of the fortress are circumscribed, consisting, as far as can be traced by the foundations, of a single street, it cannot be doubted that the said colonists, embracing both Alains and Goths, and not Goths alone, as Scott would have it, took advantage of the grottos as well as of the fortress for places of refuge. It is probable that at this time the number of caves at Inkerman were increased. For a whole people, driven into these isolated fastnesses, would, as a matter almost of certainty, have found them insufficient for their accommodation; and this may have been the period when the grottos in the face of the moat, opposite to the walls, were excavated. We pass over the subsequent invasions of the Huns, always speeding onwards to seek a wider field for their adventurous passions; that of the Khazars, of the Petchenegues, and of the Komans-a Mongolian horde -as not affecting the Goths, who were befriended at that period by the Emperors of Byzantium. Justinian is said to have built walls and fortresses across the different valleys of the Black River, and of the now well-known Balbek, Katchka, Alma, and Salghir, which were all in the country of the Goths, and beyond the Heracleontic Khersonesus. This was at a time when the light of Christianity had shed its benign influence over the Goths, their form of worship appearing at first to have been exceedingly simple; and in the same reign-that of Justinian I.-a bishop was appointed, they having sent petitions to the emperor to that effect. It is supposed by many, but doubted by others, whether the Goths were at any time followers of the doctrines of Arius, but it is certain they did not come under the government of the Greek Church before the year A.D. 547. They were consequently exposed to persecution from Pagans, and probably from other Christian communities alike, the Greek Church having found a footing at an earlier epoch at Khersonesus; and like the early Christians of Phrygia, of Cappadocia, and of most countries of Western Asia, their monks selected strong positions, more especially caverns, to guard their little communities from the danger of sudden attack, as well as to afford an asylum, in case of necessity, to those of their followers who might require it; and hence it is that we find so many remains of early Christian times in these caves of Inkerman. Among these remains are those of two churches and a monastery, one on the Inkerman, the other on the Sebastopol, side of the ravine. There is nothing remarkable in their construction as a work of art; yet there is an absence, Mr. Scott remarks, of that roughness and simplicity which exist in many of the caverns of the opposite mountain, and which indicate their being of a much earlier date. Possibly the ecclesiastical and sepulchral grottos on the one side belonged to the Goths, those on the other to the persecuted Arians of the Greek Church. They may also very likely, like the similar excavated monasteries in Lesser Asia, have been resorted to subsequently to the conquest of the country by the Turks, and to avoid the persecutions of the Mahommedans. The Rev. Mr. Elliott also described scraps of fresco painting and the remains of sarcophagi as yet discernible in several of these caverns in his time. Strange it is to think that these fortresses, rock monasteries, and subterranean churches, these caverned dwellings and sepulchral grottos, and this valley, with its dark fishy stream below, once the scene of struggle between Hellenic Greeks and Tauro-Scythians; between Byzantine Greeks and Goths; between Goths and Alains, and Huns, and Khazars, and Komans, and other Asiatic hordes, and the place of refuge of early Christians of various denominations, Gothic, Arian, and Greek, should be now the frontier line of battle between Great Britain, France, and Turkey and Russia! The old rickety wooden bridge, which replaced the ancient three-arched structure, is now commanded by a British redoubt; the heights of Inkerman are studded with Muscovite soldiery; the caverned recesses have been the scene of repeated struggles for possession, and of daring exploits far surpassing anything that ancient chronicles-did they exist-could tell us of the same strange ravine and its dark yawning recesses, designated by the soldiery the "ovens.' Inkerman has now a name which will for ever be consecrated in the annals of the West, as it has long been in the East; and, notwithstanding the doubts of some, who think the war is only beginning-and so it may as a European war-still it is possible that, as far as Turkey is concerned, its fate may be sealed on the same battle-field as of oldthe Heracleontic Khersonesus and Inkerman may again play the same part in the present eventful game as it has done in days of yore. STATE OF THE ARMY BEFORE SEBASTOPOL MISMANAGEMENT OF THE WAR. THE siege of Sebastopol is, and has now been for some time, at a stand-still. The English army is paralysed--almost utterly powerless. The men are dying from starvation and over-work. The loss from casualties and sickness had been, up to the last intelligence, at the rate of from one to two hundred a day. Eleven hundred sick had been removed in one single day by the French ambulances for transhipment to Scutari. Destruction and annihilation hovered threateningly over the whole encampment. All this has been foreseen, yet the most inadequate measures have been taken to remedy so disastrous a state of things. There are some few persons who consider that no one is to blame. A distinguished military authority, Sir Howard Douglas, for example, argues that government is not to blame, and says that "no administrative talent" could, "at the eleventh hour," have at once replenished our military establishments with those requisites which had been permitted to decay during a long period of peace. The writer in the Edinburgh Review defends government upon the simple plea that war is, according to an old saying, a series of blunders, granting, we suppose, that in the present instance one of a most egregious and enormous character has been committed. If England and France should fail utterly in their purpose, if they should absolutely lose two splendid armies, and expose the two finest fleets of the world to everlasting derision, the Edinburgh reviewer would be able to show why it ought to be so, why it was nobody's fault, and why we ought to break our heads against a stone wall with no harm to the latter. But these are very exceptional opinions. If there is one point upon which the country at large is unanimous in opinion, it is that there has been gross and most culpable mismanagement of the war -that not one of the real and characteristic resources of the country, its numbers, its wealth, its science, its mechanical skill, its talent, its untiring, indomitable energy, have been put forth. It is pretended by certain accommodating intellects that the difficulty is to discover the real delinquent. Nonsense. The ways and means are in the hands of the executive government: if they do not know how to use them, they should make way for others who do. It has been along a mere question of pounds, shillings, and pence. To save the latter, government has involved us in a boundless wastefulness of the former. Mr. W. S. Lindsay-a good authority on VOL. XXXVII. I |
