of the Kizil-tash lake. The redoubtable Suvarof destroyed them all mercilessly; as there was no wood in the neighbourhood, the Russians were on their advent enabled to build their huts and houses, to cook in summer and warm themselves in winter, with the timber derived from valuable fruit-bearing trees. The Duke of Richelieu saved a few by assigning them as private property to meritorious Cossacks, and it was thus that the two or three little gardens still to be seen to the south were preserved. It is curious that in our own times one of the chief objects to which the Allies directed their attention, when in possession of Taman, was the spoliation of the timber from the houses; so the remains of the old Turkish trees are now, by a singular reversion of fate, acting at Kertch and Yeni-Kaleh as rafts to support the roofs that shelter the gallant vindicators of the people formerly expelled from these very regions. This act of vandalism also entailed serious mischief, for the sands, no longer bound down by trees and shrubs, were blown about over the gardens, and even into the town, burying all available soil, and threatening the very existence of the church, having already made their way over the walls into the cemetery. This would tend to show that the beautiful gardens of Taman, so shamefully destroyed by the Russians, existed even anterior to the Turks, for the church of Taman was founded by Duke Mtislav, who, after having assisted the Emperor of Constantinople in subduing the Khazars in the Crimea, declared war against the Kassogues, a Circassian tribe. He vanquished their chief in single combat, and in commemoration of the act founded this church, which he dedicated to Bojemater-the mother of God. If this church had not been protected by gardens against the moving sands since 1022, it would have long before the time of the Turks have been exposed to the fate that now awaits it. The roof which projects, and is supported by a wooden colonnade, protects the marbles of Phanagoria from the ravages of time. Among the inscriptions preserved here is one that relates that in the year 6576 (A.D. 1065) Prince Gleb measured the distance of Tmoutarakan from Kertch on the ice, and he found it amount to 30,054 sasches (60,108 yards). Taman was at that time called Tmoutarakan, which Constantine Porphyrogenetus wrote in the tenth century Tamatarcha, describing it as a castrum built on a low island, which was called Atech. P. Visconti, in his map of 1318, calls the same place Matreca; Gratiosus Benincasa, in 1480, Matriga; and later medieval geographers write Matuga, Matega, and Matrega. The Turks first called it Taman. It was under them composed of a town and citadel, of which the Russians obtained possession in 1787, but finding themselves encumbered with ruins, or not deeming the place to be strong enough, they destroyed the greater part in order to construct the fort of Phanagoria, which was begun in 1794. The old fort consisted of an enclosure with walls and bastions irregularly disposed on the seashore, with the artesian spring to the south and east. A square platform mounting guns completed the defences to the east, between the spring and the sea. The Turkish town stretched over the space that remained between the fort and the spring, but there are no traces of it in the present day. This Turkish town was built upon the ruins of the ancient Korokandame; the foundations, when carefully examined, are found to be mixed with fragments of Greek pottery and marbles. Part of the ancient city appears to be also buried in the sea. All the successive nations that dwelt on this island, whether Sindians, Mæotes, Greeks, Bosphorians, Scythians, Khazars, Slaves, Tatars, Turks, or Russians, congregated around the artesian springs, the only sources of pure water in the island. Two versts from Taman, in the direction of Cape Tusla (from whence the Iouchenaia-kossa, or southern sandy spit, advances into the Bay of Taman), hills with summits of coral rag, similar to what are seen near Kertch, are met with. They form three distinct ranges, one of which stretches out to Cape Tuzla, a second to Cape Kechi-burun, and a third to Cape Panaghia. These three capes border the eastern outlet of the Bosphorus. The coral rag only covers the top of the peaked hills, and everywhere rests upon tertiary deposits, consisting of black and brown clayslates, white and blue marls, gypsum, and shelly limestones. It is only on the European side that the quaternary shelly limestone— the Steppe limestone-makes its appearance above these. The highway from Taman to Boghaz-the outlet of Lake Kizil-tashcrosses the hills at a point which is a centre of volcanic action; nothing is seen around but eruptions of mud, and hydro-sulphureous and bituminous springs with saline efflorescences. One of these volcanoes burst forth with flames in 1828; another in 1835. Ten versts from Taman, little more than a mile ride, the road passes over another range of hills, from whence a magnificent view is obtained of the Sindian Gulf, now Lake Kizil-tash, the Boghaz or mouth of the Kuban, with Anapa in the distance, and beyond the serrated spur of the Caucasus, which terminates in Cape Oussoussoup, or Outriche. These vast sheets of water, which lie within the Peninsula of Taman, and formerly separated it into so many different islands, each having its own historical interest, whether Lake Aktaniz or Kizil-tash, or the smaller Zikurovskoe, or the Bay of Taman itself, are enlivened in October by swans, geese, and wild ducks, in such prodigious numbers as to whiten or blacken, as the case may be, a vast extent of their waters. On the southern slope of the hills, which, at little more than a mile from Taman, afford so extensive and so splendid a prospect, are numerous sources of naphtha and a few cones of mud and bitumen. The coast of the sea and that of Lake Kizil-tash, called Lake Tsikourofskoi in the maps of Generals Moukhin and Khatof, and Lake Soukour in those of MM. Stevens and Favre, is from Cape Kishla, or Kichela, dotted with ruins. Two other ruined sites exist upon each of the points of land that close up the little estuary of the Boghaz. Ancient Sindia. was not, it would appear, confined to the island, for we know from Strabo, Arrian, and other olden geographers, that the royal city of the Sindians was in the neighbourhood of Anapa, where are extensive ruins.. It therefore comprised, besides that portion of the Peninsula of Taman. which is to the north of the Sindian estuary, all that narrow tract of land through which the Kuban did not at that time find an outlet as it does at present. Gerghippie, which bore on its medals the prow of a ship, must have been a maritime town, apparently with Aborace, in the neighbourhood of the royal city. Jan.-VOL. CVI. NO. CCCCXXI. C There only remains, then, the site of Hermonassa, among the towns mentioned by olden writers, which appeared to have belonged to the peninsula. Pliny places it at the mouth of the Bosphorus, and it would appear to be at or near the Boghaz of our own times. Nothing can be more wild and savage in its naked watery grandeur than the modern Boghaz, the outlet of Lake Kizil-tash and of the Kuban, with its fort and its quarantine, destroyed at an early period of the war by British ships. No ruins of olden time exist at the station itself, but such are met with on the hills which form the backbone of the land that intervenes between the estuary of Boghaz and the lake of Kizil-tash, not far from the ruined village of Kormoussa. At the same point we first meet with that red-coloured shelly limestone which has given its modern name to the old Sindian Gulf. Lake Zikurovskoe, or, as it is called by some, the estuary of Boghaz, is crossed by a dyke of sandy soil, partly artificial, to Štebliefska, a flourishing village of Cossacks. The northern shore of the lake is, however, naked and desert, although the traces of the furrows made in olden times by the agricultural Tartars, before the arrival of the Russians, are still visible. The chief places of the Tartars were Abde, on the shores of the lake at the mouth of a rivulet flowing from the Assodagh, and Otiche, upon the site of which the Cossacks built Stebliefska. From Stebliefska, also, going towards Lake Aktaniz, the country is marked by the furrows of an older cultivation. The soil in this neighbourhood and up to the banks of the Kuban is very fertile, and adapted either for pasture or arable land of first-rate productiveness. This region was inhabited before the arrival of the Russians by the rebel Cossacks, Nekrassofs, who came originally from the Don. In the present day it is a mere wilderness, notwithstanding its natural fertility, and the only village of any size is Titanofka, in a bay of Lake Aktaniz, and whose prosperity depends upon its productive springs of naphtha. This portion of the Peninsula of Taman is said also to contain ruins, but has as yet been but hastily traversed, and, consequently, may richly reward the more careful exploration of practised travellers. Tumuli are no longer met with in these regions. Only three are met west of Taman, going towards Cape Tuzla, and two or three are to be seen in the hollow way of the Kuban and Stebliefska. None are seen in the neighbourhood of Boghaz. Their presence or their absence at once intimates the line of demarcation between the Milesian colonies and the territories occupied by the native Sindians. The latter regions and the lower valley of the Kuban have not, however, been visited as yet by any competent observer, whether naturalist or archæologist. THE ALCHEMIST'S DAUGHTER. FROM THE GERMAN OF E. W. CONTESSA. BY MRS. BUSHBY. THE house of Mr. Trymm, the goldsmith, looked out upon a wide, lonely square, opposite to the cathedral. The wild music of the wind came whistling through the narrow apertures in the spires of that old edifice, and the rain pattered dismally against the windows of the gloomy apartment where sat, in the dusk of the evening, Maria, with her old nurse Susanna. As she turned her spinning-wheel, Maria sang: "The wild wind sweeps across the heath, Oh close the tomb-these hearts are cold." "What! at these doleful ditties again!" exclaimed Susanna. "Do sing something merry, to make time pass pleasantly away." "I cannot," replied Maria, with a deep sigh, "for I feel as sad to-day as if some misfortune were hanging over me." "True," observed Susanna, casting her eyes on a picture which hung on the wall, "this is the anniversary of your poor mother's death. On this day you have always been sorrowful. But remember that you are now a bride, and be cheerful again." "A bride who knows nothing of her bridegroom," sighed Maria. At that moment her father walked slowly into the room, set his lamp on the table, and threw himself silently into an easy-chair. "What ails you, father ?" cried Maria. "You look pale and troubled." Mr. Trymm answered not, but seemed lost in meditation. At length he asked the hour. Susanna told him eight o'clock. "Eight!" he exclaimed anxiously. "Still four hours of this day to run!" "And will you eat nothing yet?" asked Susanna. "Here are two whole days that you have been busy with your secret work, and have forgotten wholesome meat and drink for your unearthly studies." Mr. Trymm remained silent for some time, then suddenly stretching out his hand to his daughter, he called her to him. Maria, inwardly surprised at his unwonted kindness, rose and took her father's hand. "Something important hangs over us to-day," he said; "fate lingers at our door. I can perceive its mysterious tokens, but cannot discover whether these forebode good or evil. But when I compare them with my dream last night, in which I distinctly beheld my own corpse walk over our threshold, I can only believe that my hour-glass has run out, and that my day has nearly ended. Perhaps, at this moment, while I talk to thee, my child, the angel of death may be hovering over my head." The sadness which had all day oppressed Maria's heart, now found vent in tears, and the old nurse declared their gloom was so infectious, that she almost fancied she saw a spirit herself. At that moment a loud knocking was heard at the door. Maria started, Mr. Trymm hurried to the window, and Susanna, taking the solitary lamp, went to see who the unusually late visitor might be. The voice of a stranger was heard as some one evidently ascended the stairs, and Susanna returned with a letter in her hand. "From your old friend in Brunswick," she said, addressing her master, "and the bearer wishes to speak to you himself." She was closely followed by a tall, handsome, well-dressed young man, who, respectfully saluting the goldsmith, said, "I bring you hearty greetings from your friend; what further he has to communicate you will find in that letter." The old man cast his eye hastily over the letter. His brow cleared and his eye brightened as he exclaimed, ""Tis well, God be thanked! This may become of consequence. The signs were for good. You are wel come, sir." Susanna was despatched to prepare the evening repast, and Maria to arrange an apartment for the unexpected guest. 66 And you wish to work with me?" said the old man to the stranger. "Mr. Eckard gives you a strong recommendation. You must see if you can make yourself comfortable in my house. You are welcome to it." you "Ever since I have heard of your surpassingly skilful workmanship," replied the stranger, "especially since I saw the golden goblet which manufactured for Duke Christian, I have felt an anxious wish to become acquainted with you." "You will not gain much by that, I fear," said the old man, with a smile. "The work is generally more deserving of admiration than the workman. Besides, the time has now long gone past since I devoted myself to such works as that alone. The infant is pleased with the shell of the nut, but the more mature inquirer seeks for life's golden kernels." While they were thus conversing, and the stranger listened with apparent surprise to the old man's last remark, Maria passed backwards and forwards in the performance of her duties, and surveyed, with stolen glances, the unexpected guest. She felt a peculiar sensation, as if some struggle were going on in her mind as if she were, by a strange power, involuntarily attracted towards the stranger and then repelled again; and as often as she looked at his fine, pale countenance, shaded with raven locks, she could not help thinking of the angel of death of whom her father had so recently been speaking. When they were seated at table, he fixed his eyes several times upon her when he thought he was not perceived. She felt then as if all her blood were rushing to her crimsoned cheek, and then, as if frightened by his glance, flowing back wildly to her beating heart. Mr. Trymm seemed to have fallen into a fit of absence of mind, except when he now and then evinced unmistakable signs of impatience. The moment their repast was finished, and he had said the grace, he desired Susanna to conduct the guest to his sleeping chamber, as he must be tired after his journey. Then ordering his daughter to go to bed, he betook himself in haste to his laboratory. His friend in Brunswick had sent him very important intelligence— namely, that he had found indications of the way to transmute metals into gold. As an act of friendship, he communicated the particulars of |