Travels in the Steppes of the Caspian Sea, the Crimea, the Caucasus, &c. Xavier Hommaire de Hell

and that shows how much liberal ideas are in favour in this town, is the establishment of a sort of casino, where all grades of society assemble on Sunday, to dance and hold parties of pleasure. This is without a parallel elsewhere.

      This casino contains a large ball-room, handsome gardens, billiard and refreshment-rooms, and every thing else that can be desired in an establishment of the sort. Though all persons are at liberty to enter without payment, it is nevertheless frequented by the best society, who dance there as heartily as in the most aristocratic salons. All distinctions vanish in the casino: public functionaries, shopkeepers, officers' wives, work-girls, foreigners, persons, in short, of all ranks and conditions mingle together, forming an amusing pell-mell, that reminds one, by its unceremonious gaiety, of the bals champêtres of the environs of Paris. Every thing is a matter of surprise to the traveller in this little town, so remote from all civilisation: the hotels are provided with good restaurants, clean chambers, each furnished with a bed, and all appurtenances complete (a thing unheard of everywhere else in the interior of Russia), besides many other things that are hardly to be found even in Odessa.

      Rostof is the centre of all the commerce of the interior of the empire, with the Sea of Azov, and with a large portion of the Russian coasts of the Black Sea. Through this town pass all the productions of Siberia, and the manufactured goods intended for consumption throughout the greater part of Southern Russia. These goods are floated down the Volga as far as Doubofka, in the vicinity of Saritzin. They are then carried by land, a distance of about thirty-eight miles to Kahilnitzkaia, where they are embarked on the Don, and conveyed to Rostof, their general entrepôt. The barges on the Don and the Volga are flat; 112 feet long, from twenty to twenty-six wide, and about six feet deep. They draw only two feet of water, and cost from 300 to 500 rubles. They are freighted with timber and firewood, mats, bark, pitch, tar, hemp, cables, and cordage, pig and wrought iron, pieces of artillery, anchors, lead, copper, butter, &c. The whole traffic and navigation of the Don, down stream, from Kahalnitzkaia, depends on the arrivals from the Volga. The barges employed on the latter river, being put together with wooden bolts, are taken asunder at Doubofka, and laid with their cargoes in carts, on which they are conveyed to the banks of the Don.[8] Seven or eight days are sufficient for this operation, the expense of which amounts nearly to a quarter of the capital employed. Thus every year the crown and the merchants spend from 850,000 to 1,000,000 rubles at Doubofka. It is reckoned that 10,000 pairs of oxen, on an average, are employed on the road connecting the two rivers. The charge for heavy goods is from sixty to sixty-five kopeks the 100 kilogrammes. The vessels that ascend the Upper Don convey the goods above-named to the government of Voronege and the adjoining ones; besides which, some are freighted with the fruits and wines of the Don. Scarcely any traffic ascends the lower part of the river.

      The coasting trade of Rostof is, therefore, brisk, and particularly so since the establishment of the quarantine at Kertch. There were exported from the town, in 1840, for Russian ports, more than 3,500,000 rubles' worth of domestic goods of various kinds, and about 700,000 rubles' worth of provisions, chiefly intended for the armies. Flax-seed and common wool have also become, within the last three years, rather important articles of export to foreign countries. The population of Rostof is about 8000.

      Azov, on the other side of the Don, a little below Rostof, is now only a large village. Its long celebrated fortress has been abandoned, and is falling into ruin. It is said to occupy the site of the ancient Tana, built by the Greeks of the Bosphorus.

      The fort of Saint Dimitri, built by Peter the Great, between Rostof and Nakhitchevane, has had the same fate as Azov. It was formerly destined to protect the country against the incursions of the Turks, who were then masters of the opposite bank. The post-road traverses its whole length, and then continues all the way to Nakhitchevane, along a raised causeway, and overlooks the whole basin of the river. Nothing can be more varied than the wide landscapes through which one travels along this extended ridge. Behind lies Rostof, with its harbour full of vessels, and its houses rising in terrace rows, one above the other, its Greek churches, and its hanging gardens. On the right is the calm and limpid mirror of the river, spreading out into a broad basin, with banks shaded with handsome poplars. Fishing-boats, rafts, and barges diversify its surface, and give the most picturesque appearance to this part of the landscape. Then in front, Nakhitchevane, the elegant Armenian town, towers before you, the glazed windows of its great bazaars glittering in the sun. Enter the town, and you are surprised by a vision of the East, as you behold the capricious architecture of the buildings, and the handsome Asiatic figures that pass before you.

      Impelled by our recollections of Constantinople, we visited every quarter of the town without delay. At the sight of the veiled women, trailing their yellow slippers along the ground with inimitable nonchalance, the Oriental costumes, the long white beards, the merchants sitting on their heels before their shops, and the bazaars filled with the productions of Asia, we fancied ourselves really transported to one of the trading quarters of Stamboul; the illusion was complete. The shops abound with articles, many of which appeared to us very curious. The Armenians are excellent workers in silver. We were shown some remarkably beautiful saddles, intended for Caucasian chiefs. One of them covered with blue velvet, adorned with black enamelled silver plates, and with stirrups of massive silver, and a brilliantly adorned bridle, had been ordered for a young Circassian princess. Here, as in Constantinople, each description of goods has its separate bazaar, and the shops are kept by men only.

      This Armenian town, seated on the banks of the Don, in the heart of a country occupied by the Cossacks, is still one of those singularities which are only to be met with in Russia. One cannot help asking what can have been the cause why these children of the East have transplanted themselves into a region, where nothing is in harmony with their manner of being; where the language, habits, and wants of the inhabitants are diametrically opposite to their own, and where nature herself reminds them, by stern tokens, that their presence there is but an accident. It is true that the Armenians are essentially cosmopolitan, and accommodate themselves to all climates and governments, when their pecuniary interests require it. Industrious, intelligent, and frugal, they thrive everywhere, and commerce springs up with their presence, in every place where they settle. Thus it was that Nakhitchevane, the town of traffic par excellence, to which purchasers resort from the distance of twenty-five leagues all round it, arose amidst the wilderness of the Don. It was only Armenians who could have effected such a prodigy, and found the means of prosperity in a retail trade. But nothing has escaped their keen sagacity; every source of profit is largely employed by them. They do not confine themselves to the local trade; on the contrary, there is not a fair in all Southern Russia that is not attended by dealers from Nakhitchevane. The supply of dress and arms to the inhabitants of the Caucasus, still forms one of the principal branches of commerce for these Armenians. They maintain a pretty close correspondence with the mountaineers, and are even accused of serving them as spies. As to their social habits, the Armenians are in Nakhitchevane what they are everywhere else; they may change their country and their garb, but their manners and their usages never undergo any alteration. Their race is like a tree whose trunk is almost destroyed, but which throws up at every point new shoots, invariable in their nature, and differing from each other only in some outward particulars.

      The colony of Nakhitchevane dates from the year 1780, when Catherine II. had the greater part of the Armenians of the Crimea transported to the banks of the Don. The colonists are divided into agriculturists and shopkeepers. The former inhabit five villages, containing a population of 4600; the others reside exclusively in the town, which is the chief place of their establishment, and contains about 6000 souls. These Armenians enjoy the same privileges as the Greeks of Marioupol, already mentioned. They are under the control of functionaries chosen by themselves, and it happens very rarely that they are obliged to have recourse to the Russian tribunals.

      The following was the decision adopted by the Council of the Empire, in 1841, relatively to the Armenians of New Russia. "The descendants of the Armenians settled at the invitation of the government, in the towns of Karasson Bazar, Starikrim in the Crimea, Nakhitchevane, and Gregorioupol, in the government of Kherson, will continue to pay, not the poll-tax, but the land-tax, and that on houses, according to the privileges granted to their fathers by an ukase of October 28, 1799; whilst those who have