THE CRIMEA
The Crimea, the loveliest gem in the crown of the czar, is a trophy
captured by Catherine the Great in one of the numerous wars of conquest
that have been brought by the Russians against Turkey. These wars have
been going on at intervals for centuries, and will continue to occur
until the patriarch of the Greek orthodox church presides again at St.
Sophia, the most famous of all Mohammedan mosques--once a Christian
temple. The Turks let the sign of the cross remain upon the pediment
over the entrance that faces toward Mecca as a reminder and a taunt to
the Christian world.
After Catherine captured the Crimea she attempted to realize the dream
of Peter the Great by chasing the Turks from Europe. She proclaimed
her supremacy over all the northern shore of the Black Sea and
made preparations to erect her throne in Constantinople. It was a
magnificent scheme of conquest, and it might have been carried out but
for the outbreak of the French Revolution and a national uprising under
Kosciusko in Poland. Her attention was thus diverted from the south,
and it was left for Nicholas, the “iron czar,” to subdue the Caucasus
and extend the limits of Russia to the Caspian Sea.
In 1787 Catherine made a triumphal journey to visit her new
possessions. She rode in a chariot covered with gold leaf and bearing
her monogram in diamonds upon the doors. The axles of the wheels were
studded with costly gems and never was such a splendid equipage used by
mortal. It outshone the chariots of the fairies, and you may see it,
if you wish, preserved with other relics of the most luxurious of all
queens, in the Kremlin at Moscow.
The empress was received everywhere with great enthusiasm by the
communities her soldiers had conquered. Festivals and illuminations
were prepared to impress her with the loyalty of her new subjects and
Prince Potemkin, her viceroy, built a road 200 miles long through the
wilderness in order that her journey might be more comfortable. She was
convinced of the glory and prosperity of her dominions and over the
gate through which she passed into the city of Kherson, thirty miles
north of Odessa, was this inscription:
“This is the way to Byzantium”--the Russian name for Constantinople.
By the same war Russia got Odessa and the north shore of the Black Sea.
Alexander I renewed the struggle in 1855, for the purpose of taking the
south coast and the northern provinces of Asia Minor from the sultan,
when the intervention of England, France, and Sardinia provoked the
Crimean war. It was not until 1877 that the conquest was resumed by
Alexander II, and Russia then gained Batoum, and the eastern shore of
the Black Sea, and a portion of Armenia; deprived the Great Turk of
Bulgaria, Bosnia, and Herzegovina, and established the independence
of Montenegro under the protection of the Powers. And the end is not
yet. The advance of the Russian boundaries toward the Mediterranean and
the winning of a port upon the Pacific as an outlet for the products
of Siberia are the fixed policy of the Romanoffs and they will
fight until they get it. The late war with Japan set back the pointer
upon the dial of Russian conquest, and the results which had been
accomplished by diplomacy in Manchuria were lost. That will all have to
be done over again, and the task will be ten-fold more difficult, but
it will nevertheless be attempted, sooner or later.
[Illustration: Gateway to Aloupka Palace, The Crimea]
By the next war Russia expects to gain the south coast of the Black
Sea, and the northern provinces of Asia Minor. In anticipation of
early possession, Nicholas Cherikoff, the czar’s ambassador at
Constantinople, has succeeded in concluding a treaty under which the
Turkish government is pledged not to permit the subjects of any other
nation but Russia to build railways, to buy mines, to secure control
of any form of property, or engage in any form of enterprise in that
territory. When an American syndicate was seeking a railway concession
in Asia Minor not long ago its representatives were notified by the
Turkish minister of public works that it could not build its tracks
north of Sivas; that Russia claimed exclusive rights in the belt
of provinces lying along the southern coast of the Black Sea. This
humiliating confession is loaded with significance. It illustrates
the foresight and the determination with which the Russian policy of
conquest is conducted.
The Crimea is one of the loveliest spots on earth--“A Little Paradise,”
the Tartar inhabitants call it, as fertile as it is beautiful, with a
climate as attractive as its scenery, and every physical condition that
is favourable to health, happiness, and prosperity. That is one of the
reasons why the peninsula has been fought over so fiercely through all
the ages by the dominating nations of the earth.
The peninsula, which extends from the southern coast of Russia into
the Black Sea, is almost circular in form, and measures 225 miles
east and west and 155 miles north and south at its widest points. The
total area is about ten thousand English square miles. The delightful
climate and the scenic attractions have made the Crimea the playground
of Russia, and the southern coast is lined with splendid villas
belonging to rich nobles, merchants, and manufacturers, and hotels of
all descriptions, villages of boarding-houses, and popular resorts for
the accommodation of the ten thousand. The hotels are open the year
around, the thermometer runs up to ninety degrees in midsummer, but the
heat is tempered by cool breezes that play upon the Black Sea, and in
winter the climate is ideal. The best months for comfort are May, June,
October, and November, and the imperial family of Russia usually spend
them here at a villa called Livadia, where the late Alexander III died
several years ago.
A range of mountains called the Yallis runs parallel with the southern
and eastern coast, culminating in Tohadyr-Dagh, a peak which rises
4,800 feet above the waters of the Black Sea, and is surrounded by
other peaks between three thousand and four thousand feet in height.
The southern coast is very abrupt and picturesque. The cliffs rise
abruptly from the water to the height of 2,000, 3,000 and even 4,000
feet, and are crowned with domes, pyramids, pinnacles, and spires
of rock as fantastic as the architecture of a dream. The cliffs are
honeycombed with caverns caused by the decomposition of the limestone
and are the delight of geologists, because of their stalactites and
stalagmite formations. Other phenomena are abundant. Hot springs
and mud volcanoes bubble up, spout steam, and indulge in other
frightful manifestations, which made the Crimea uncanny and mysterious
to the ancients, but in these prosaic days the hot mud is used to
cure rheumatism and skin diseases, and the hot water to restore the
digestive apparatus of Russian gluttons.
These caverns were once inhabited by a mysterious race called the
Cimmerians and Troglodytes, who were supposed to live in darkness and
worshipped a virgin goddess named Iphigenia. When a stranger landed
on their shores they robbed him and sacrificed him on her altars. In
modern times the hotel landlords carry on a similar business on a cash
basis. They allow strangers to depart with their lives, but without
their money.
The mountains of the Crimea are covered with dense forests and wild
flowers grow there more abundantly than in any other part of Europe.
The woods and meadows are carpeted with white and purple violets. The
tulip, the veronica, the lily of the valley, the geranium, sweet peas,
and other flowering plants reach perfection in a wild state, and are so
plentiful that nobody thinks of cultivating them. In the northern part
of the Crimea are salt lakes from which a hundred million pounds of
salt are harvested annually by evaporation, and distributed throughout
Russia, bringing much profit to the operators, and a large revenue to
the government. The coast abounds in a great variety of fish, which
furnish another profitable occupation for the people, and are shipped
by train loads into the interior of Russia every day.
In ancient times the Crimea produced vast quantities of corn, which
was exported to Greece and Rome and other Mediterranean countries,
but agriculture has been supplanted by horticulture, and the sunny
slopes of the peninsula are covered with orchards and vineyards and
truck gardens. The Crimea is famous for wines, although they are
too sweet and heavy for the American taste. Fruits of every kind,
peaches, apples, pears, plums, gooseberries, strawberries, raspberries,
and currants, walnuts, almonds, chestnuts, hazel nuts, melons, and
vegetables of every variety are produced in enormous quantities
and shipped to northern Russia. The Crimea is the hothouse, the
conservatory of the empire, and supplies early vegetables to the tables
of the rich residents of St. Petersburg and Moscow, as the truck forms
of Florida provide for those of our northern cities.
The largest part of the population of the Crimea are
Tartars--Crim-Tartars they are called, to distinguish them from other
representatives of that race--Crim being the Russian form of the word
Crimea. They are Mohammedans and have a streak of the savage left
in them. No Tartar was ever thoroughly civilized. They resemble the
Sicilians in character and habits--in their passionate natures, their
jealous dispositions, their vendetta and love of revenge, but they are
a sober, industrious, generous-hearted people, whose most sacred fetich
is hospitality. They never turn a stranger, even a tramp, from the
door. They are always courteous, always deferential and expect their
kindness to be returned in good faith.
The Crim-Tartars have a genius for gardening. They love plants and
trees and flowers. Whatever they sow brings forth a thousand-fold. They
tend the orchards and the gardens of the peninsula, raise the fruit and
make the wines, carry on the fisheries, furnish household servants
for the hotels, boarding-houses and villas, and leave shop-keeping
and trading to the Armenians and the Jews, who are numerous there
as everywhere else in southern Russia, and control financial and
mercantile affairs.
The Crimea is a fascinating field for historians and archæologists,
for its original inhabitants furnished much material for mythology,
and their remains abound in various parts of the little peninsula. The
Cimmerians, the first inhabitants referred to in history, were known
to Homer and Herodotus, and their gloomy situation is described in the
“Odyssey” xi, 15:
“There in a lonely land and gloomy cells
The dusky nation of Cimmeria dwells;
Unhappy race! Whom endless night invades,
Clouds the dull air and wraps them round in shades.”
The Scythians, an Asiatic tribe, drove the Cimmerians out of the
Crimea in 680 B.C. The latter crossed the Black Sea and settled along
the coast of Asia Minor. Thence they spread over Europe and were the
founders of three races--the Welsh, the Milesians, and the Goths. Welsh
names abound throughout the Crimea, and in the mountains of Wales the
old families are known as Cymry.
The Strait of Kertch, which connects the Sea of Azov with the Euxine,
or Black Sea, is labelled the “Cimmerian Bosphorus” on all the early
maps. The word Bosphorus means, literally, “the passage of an ox,” and
is an ancient designation of all streams and water-courses which will
permit an ox to cross them by wading or swimming.
The port of Theodosia, the first important town on the Black Sea south
of Kertch, dates back a thousand years before the Christian era and was
known to Ptolemy, Strabo, Pliny, and the historians and geographers of
the Romans, Greeks, and the Egyptians under the name Caffa; afterward
as Ardava, which means “the city of the seven gods.” This was the
capital of the Milesians in the seventh century before Christ, and it
was a place of great importance. Scattered throughout the country are
tumuli, which are believed to be the graves of kings, and several of
them have already been explored with surprising success. Herodotus,
the Greek historian, who must have visited Crimea about 375 or 400
B.C., describes the peninsula in considerable detail, and tells about
the burial ceremonies of Scythian chieftains. The same customs were
followed by the Milesians in Ireland centuries afterward.
He relates that when a king died his body was embalmed and laid in
a tomb surrounded by at least one of his wives and several of his
servants and his horse, who were strangled for that purpose. His
weapons, golden cups, and other articles of daily use were placed
beside him in the sepulchre, in order that he might be properly
equipped in the next world. Earth was then piled upon the tomb until it
formed a miniature mountain. Several of these tumuli have been opened;
one, in which Parisades I, who was king of Crimea in the fifth century
B.C., was buried, contained the skeletons of his queen, of several
attendants, a horse with helmet and greaves, various arms and utensils
for eating and drinking, and the bones of a sheep.
In the neighbourhood of Kertch are extensive catacombs similar to those
built by the early Christians in Rome. Excavations conducted under the
direction of the Russian authorities several years ago disclosed rich
ornaments of gold and silver, quaint arms and utensils of exquisite
workmanship, which are now in the Hermitage Museum of St. Petersburg.
The walls of the catacombs are plastered over and covered with
cryptographs and paintings, containing the history of prominent people
who are buried near by. They are similar to the inscriptions on the
Egyptian tombs, and represent combats, hunting scenes, court ceremonies
and various other human activities, with accurate pictures of horses,
oxen, dogs, and other animals. The men are usually represented in
shirts of mail, wearing trousers supported by belts and conical
caps similar to the Turkish fez. These catacombs date back at least
twenty-five hundred years, and in several cases the occupants can be
identified as the early sovereigns of the Cimmerians and the Milesians.
In the sixth century B.C., a Greek colony from Ionia settled near
Kertch and dedicated their city to the god Pan, calling it Panticapæum.
Coins bearing the effigy of that divinity have been dug up in the
neighbourhood. In the same century the Scythians sent a force of men
into Asia Minor to assist in repelling the invasion of Darius. In the
year 480 B.C. the king of the Crimea was Archæanax. His successor was
Spartacus, who died 438 B.C. The people of the peninsula preserved
their independence until 115 B.C., when Parisades, the last native
king, surrendered to Mithridates, who was the sovereign of twenty-two
nations, and able to converse with the inhabitants of all of them
without an interpreter.
From that time on the Crimea was the scene of continual struggles. The
Greeks, the Persians, the Romans, the Goths, the Huns, the Genoese,
the Venetians, the Byzantines, and other races succeeded one another in
control at intervals of a century or two. The Golden Horde of Tartars
in the fourteenth century drove out the Genoese and retained control,
although compelled to pay tribute to the Turks, until in 1771, when
the Tartar khan, Sahym Ghyrey, surrendered to Prince Potemkin and the
Crimea became a part of the Russian empire.
One of the early rulers, Pharnaces, son of Mithridates, A.D. 63, was
in command of the forces that were whipped by Cæsar so easily at the
battle of Zelah as to cause him to send his famous despatch to the
Roman senate: “Veni! Vidi! Vici!”
Another of the kings of the Crimea, Polemo II, a pagan, married the
daughter of King Agrippa of Bible fame and adopted the Jewish faith,
which he afterward renounced when his wife deserted him.
The Tartar khanate, which dates from 1380, had its capital at
Baghtchasarai, about thirty miles northeast of Sevastopol and the same
distance northwest of Yalta. The Khan Sarai, or palace, was restored
and refurnished according to the original style by Prince Potemkin
for the reception of Catherine the Great when she visited the Crimea
in 1787. It is a fantastic building of barbaric splendour, and it is
said to be described in the famous poem “Lallah Rookh.” The Russian
poet Pushkin rhapsodizes over its beauties in some pretty verses
of description. It is by no means as beautiful or as extensive as
the Alhambra in Spain, but resembles it in the arrangement and the
decoration of the apartments.
There are several well-preserved tombs of the khans who reigned
between 1380 and 1786, including a graceful mausoleum, similar to those
at Delhi outside the walls, in which repose the mortal remains of
Deliarah Bikeh, the beautiful Georgian wife of Khan Shahim Gherai. Her
original name was Maria Potorzka. She was the daughter of a Georgian
chieftain, a Christian by birth and training, and refused to change
her religion. In one of the apartments of the palace is a fountain
which her husband, Shahim Gherai, erected in her memory as a symbol of
the tears he shed after her death. It is called “the flood of tears.”
Outside the walls, in an octagonal mausoleum with a dome, she is
buried, and over the door is written in Tartar characters:
“This is the tomb of Deliarah Bikeh, beloved wife of Shahim Gherai,
died 1746 A.D. She was a Christian.”
The fountain bears the same date.
About four miles from the town, upon the crest of a lofty crag called
Chufut Kaleh (“Jewish rock”) is another stately tomb. It is regarded
as one of the finest specimens of Tartar architecture in existence,
and was erected in 1437 in honour of a Jewess, Nene Kejeh, queen of
Toktamysh, khan of the Golden Horde.
There are many Jews in this part of the Crimea, whose ancestors came
there eight centuries before the Christian era. They are of the Karaim
sect and follow the Mosaic laws strictly. They are supposed to have
many old manuscripts of priceless value, but the Russian government
has never been able to secure any of them for the Imperial Library
at St. Petersburg, although repeated attempts have been made. The
museums at St. Petersburg have collections of great value and interest
illustrating the arts, industries, habits, and customs of the early
occupants of the Crimean peninsula. There are also many interesting
ethnological and archæological examples in a pretty little museum at
Odessa; but only a few of the ruins of ancient cities have ever been
excavated and many tumuli remain unexplored. It is a popular impression
that the manuscripts carried from Jerusalem at the time of the
captivity and brought to the Crimea shortly after, are numerous and of
the greatest value, but the rabbis pretend to know nothing of them.
The Karaims in the Crimea have enjoyed full rights and privileges
as citizens of Russia since 1802 and have never suffered from the
restrictions and persecutions of their race elsewhere. They live in a
suburb of Baghtchasarai, from choice and not from compulsion. The name
means “the stronghold of Israel,” and it has been the headquarters
of the community for 2,500 years. From this stronghold the sons of
Karaim have scattered over the peninsula and along the northern coast
of the Black Sea in pursuit of trade, and like most of their brethren,
they are industrious, energetic, and successful competitors in every
business in which they engage.
Their synagogue stands upon a hill called Mount Zion, their cemetery is
in the valley of Jehoshaphat, where thousands of tombstones bear Hebrew
inscriptions. The most ancient epitaph that can be deciphered commends
the virtues and piety of a rabbi, Moses Levi, who died “in the year 726
after the exile,” which is the same as the year 30 A.D. Another marks
the grave of “Zadok, son of Moses the Levite, who died 4,000 years
after the creation, and 785 years after the exile,” which was 89 A.D.
There are many Karaims in southern Russia, and more in Egypt and
Turkey. They are found in larger or smaller numbers everywhere along
the coast of the Mediterranean. They adapt themselves very readily to
their surroundings. In the Crimea they speak the Tartar language; in
Odessa they speak Russian; in Athens they speak Greek, and in Egypt
their language is the Arabic.
The market place of Baghtchasarai is one of the most interesting places
in the Crimea. The display of fruits and vegetables makes the observer
hungry. It also gives an unusually good opportunity to study ethnology,
for representatives of the most ancient races in the world, which have
exhausted themselves or have been exterminated elsewhere, may be found
engaged in ordinary avocations, unconscious of the fact that, counting
generations of ancestors, they are entitled to the distinction of being
the aristocracy of the earth. The Jews, the Cimmerians, the Milesians,
the Scythians, the Tauri, families in the Crimea, have pedigrees that
run back farther than human history.
The habitations of European seashore resorts are very much alike, and
consist of solid rows of masonry packed as closely as possible, with
large windows fronting the water. The ground floors are always occupied
by a series of gayly decorated show windows, with small shops behind
them, restaurants, cafés, flower stalls, and confectioners. On the
opposite side of the street there is always a sea wall, with a heavy
stone balustrade, protecting a cement promenade, from which piers
at intervals extend over the water and to the bath houses that are
clustered on the beach. All the life and all the ardour of those who
come for health or pleasure are expended upon this thoroughfare, which
is crowded from ten to eleven o’clock in the morning until midnight,
and the restaurants, tea pavilions and cafés are always filled with
people eating and drinking and having what they consider a good time.
Yalta, which is considered the Newport of Russia, the most fashionable
resort for both winter and summer in that great empire, resembles,
in the way I have described, those of France and Spain, Italy and
England, but here nature has also offered irresistible inducements for
the rich people to build villas upon the slopes of the mountains that
rise in the background, leaving a belt of about a mile wide to be thus
occupied. There is a Greek church, with five gilded domes, numerous
hotels and handsome residences belonging to grand dukes, princes and
other dignitaries; rich merchants and manufacturers. They are mostly of
very ornate architecture, built of rough brick or stone, covered with
white stucco and embellished with elaborate mouldings over the windows
and doors and along the cornices and the balconies. Some of them are
painted, and, in two or three cases, the owners have their coats of
arms displayed in brilliant colours on the walls.
One of the most attractive villas is that of the emir of Bokhara, a
political protegé of the Russian government. He goes there every winter
and sometimes in the summer, also, for he is glad to get away from home
as often as the Russian government will permit him. His villa is a fine
specimen of Saracenic architecture. He has a farm back in the hills,
also, but seldom goes there.
The hotels are very comfortable, large rooms well furnished, good meals
well served, and, during the summer months, the tables are placed on
the lawn, a practice which the managers of the hotels at our summer
resorts at home might adopt to the comfort of their patrons, instead
of feeding them in hot, close dining-rooms, blazing with light. In the
heat of midsummer a dinner will be relished a great deal more if it is
served on a lawn under the shade of a tree in the soft twilight, than
in a superheated dining-room. The charges are high, quite as high as
they are at any of our fashionable resorts, but that is to be expected.
European hotel people have discovered to their profit that tourists
will pay whatever is asked, and there are no more ten-franc-a-day
stopping places on the continent.
The bath houses are not so large nor so good as in America, and
comparatively few people bathe. The women are afraid of spoiling their
complexions and the men find more sport in other diversions.
There are lovely drives in every direction from Yalta, and waterfalls,
gorges, highly decorated gardens, dense groves, observation towers,
restaurants and all sorts of attractions scattered along the slopes of
the mountains, which rise 2,500 or 3,000 feet behind the town. I am
told that there is an average of about 7,500 visitors at Yalta daily
the year around, for in that climate, like that of Monterey and Santa
Barbara, California, one month is as pleasant as another. Hence, people
from the north of Russia come in the winter and people from the south
of Russia in the summer, and the hotels are always filled.
There is no railway, although they are talking of one to connect with
the trunk lines that run between Sevastopol and Moscow. Everybody
has to come on the steamers from Sevastopol, Odessa, Nicholaief,
Rostov, Batoum, and other ports on the Black Sea. The visitors from
St. Petersburg, Moscow and other northern points take a train to
Sevastopol and then come around by steamer in four hours, or by
carriage over a wonderful mountain road, a ten-hour ride. The steamers
are not very comfortable because the state-rooms are all below the
water line, so that the port holes cannot be opened, and there is no
ventilation; but the voyage between Yalta and Sevastopol is made both
ways in the day-time, in order to give passengers an opportunity to
enjoy the magnificent mountain scenery along the coast, and they keep
well in toward the shore for that purpose. I do not know of any other
sea voyage that will equal it for scenery.
There is a roadway around to Sevastopol from Yalta cut out of the side
of the cliff, on a level averaging 300 or 400 feet above the water,
and often running as high as a thousand feet on the slopes of the
precipices, which was built by the late Prince Woronzoff. It is one of
the most delightful and picturesque drives you can imagine. You leave
Sevastopol at nine o’clock in the morning, lunch at the Gate of Baidar,
which is the water shed, spend the night at Aloupka, and drive over to
Yalta in time for luncheon the next morning. There is a procession of
carriages loaded with tourists going both ways daily.
For nearly the entire distance a wall of rock rises from 1,000 to 4,000
feet almost abruptly from the Black Sea, being broken at intervals by
gorges and narrow valleys which run back into the fertile fields in the
interior of the Crimea. Wherever there is room for a handful of soil it
is cultivated. There are Tartar villages every few miles, and between
them orchards, vineyards, gardens, and truck farms, from which fruit
and vegetables are shipped to St. Petersburg and Moscow. The tables of
the rich people of those cities and other parts of Russia are supplied
with early vegetables and fruit from this source.
Below the roadway and between it and the water many beautiful villas
are located among the rocks and the trees. Hotels and sanitariums occur
every few miles. The hard, smooth roads are kept in perfect order and
decorated on both sides with sweetbriar roses, which continue to bloom
through the entire summer. There are myriads of wild flowers also, for
which the Crimea is famous, and it is said to have a larger variety
than any other place in the world.
This coast is much more beautiful than that of Dalmatia, although it
lacks the life and colour that is given the latter by the costumes
of the women and the men. It is more like the drive from Cork to the
Lakes of Killarney than any other place I know. The French Riviera is
more finished and polished and complete, the villas are finer; the
hotels are more imposing and the architects and landscape gardeners
have embellished nature to a greater extent, but there is more natural
beauty on the Crimean coast.
You cross the highest point, 2,200 feet, at Baidar Gate which occupies
the site of an ancient fortification intended to protect the tax
collector and to prevent hostile armies from passing along this coast,
and there you eat your luncheon upon a balcony from which you can look
down more than 2,000 feet upon the turquoise waters of the Black Sea.
Near by, upon a promontory projecting out from the precipice, a
beautiful Byzantine church has been erected as a memorial to a tea
merchant of Moscow named Kouzedneff, who had a winter villa on the
coast immediately below. The interior of the church is extravagantly
decorated and with much taste, and among the paintings is the
Christmas scene in the manger at Bethlehem. A beautiful babe lies on
a pile of straw in a stable, emitting a halo of light from its entire
body, like a block of phosphorus or radium, while a girl and a young
man in the costumes of Russian peasants look down in adoration upon
their child.
Aloupka is not so fashionable as Yalta, but is more beautiful. The
location is more picturesque and the surroundings are more attractive.
It is an assortment of hotels, boarding-houses, and sanitariums
collected around one of the most unique and fascinating country seats
I have ever seen--the palace of the Woronzoff family, built in 1839
by a governor of the Crimea of that name. He was one of the most
famous fighters in Russian history and one of the ablest executives,
and contributed more to the glory of Catherine the Great than almost
any other of her servants. He was viceroy of the Crimea and afterward
of the Caucasus, and his grandson, Prince Woronzoff Dashkoff, is
governor-general of the Caucasus to-day.
The Woronzoff palace occupies a terrace one hundred and fifty feet or
so above the Black Sea, and a stately stairway, fit for any palace,
extends from the threshold of the main entrance to the edge of the
water, being guarded on both sides by marble lions, some of them
asleep, some of them awake, some of them yawning and others in a
playful mood. The façade was copied from one of the palaces of the
Alhambra, which critics have pronounced very much out of place on
a Tudor castle. Four Byzantine towers at the corners of the walls
have also been objected to as untasteful intrusions. The rest of the
architecture is in harmony and resembles that of an English castle
of the period of Henry VIII. It was built by Sir Matthew Blore, an
English architect.
There is a monumental hall and dining-room with wainscoting and ceiling
of heavy carved oak; a drawing-room done in Wedgwood tiles of blue and
white; a second drawing-room in empire style, a library that would
not be out of place in one of the Oxford colleges, and other rooms of
dignity and perfect order. There is a large courtyard upon which the
offices of the estate and the stables open. The latter are now occupied
by a battalion of troops, which have been considered necessary to
protect the place since the revolution.
The grounds, which are unique, are always open to the public and
attract many visitors to the town. They include a dense artificial
forest of thirty acres at the foot of a precipice 4,000 feet high,
filled with enormous bowlders that during the ages have fallen from the
cliffs in odd shapes and lodged in positions which the landscape artist
has utilized in an ingenious and artistic manner. There are said to be
1,140,000 plants. Every tree was planted by hand and 127 varieties are
represented. Every plant and flowering shrub that will grow in that
climate may be found upon the grounds, and we were told that some of
the varieties cannot be found elsewhere in the Russian Empire.
Everything seems to be unique. For example, a large bowlder shaped like
an irregular pyramid, with the narrow end upward, has been converted
into a fountain. A hole has been drilled through it and a pipe has been
laid which throws a stream of water an inch in diameter to the height
of fifty feet, but strangest of all is the tomb of a pet dog, whose
precious bones occupy a marble sarcophagus large enough for a child,
placed in the centre of a cave formed by two enormous bowlders which
lean against each other. Chiseled upon the rock at the side of the
entrance is this epitaph:
CHEMLEK
Born in Brussa, May 20, 1861.
Died Aloupka, Nov. 24, 1874.
Near by is a grotto fitted up as a chapel, with an altar and the
stations of the cross, where, the old bearded Tartar who showed us
around said, the Princess Woronzoff-Dashkoff used to pray for the soul
of her dog.
The owners seldom visit this beautiful estate. The prince has been
viceroy of the Caucasus at Tiflis for many years and affairs there have
been so troublesome as to require all of his attention.
In front of the park at Sevastopol is a monumental sea-gate called the
“Grafskaya Pristan,” or “landing place of the nobility.” A stairway of
white marble fifty feet wide leads from the edge of the water to the
summit of the bluff, where is a classic marble pavilion, supported by
twelve Ionic columns. Here the czar and other distinguished visitors
are received with ceremony. This pavilion was erected as a memorial
to Prince Mihail Simonovitch Woronzoff who, next to Potemkin, was the
empire-builder of southern Russia. Traces of his ability and evidences
of his energy and enterprise are found everywhere. He was one of the
earliest governors of Odessa, where he founded numerous educational and
charitable institutions and gave an impulse to trade and commerce. He
was equally a benefactor to Sevastopol and the Grafskaya Pristan was
a tribute of the people to the permanent benefit he conferred upon
them.
[Illustration: Villa of the Czar at Livadia, Crimea]
Another interesting place near by is called “Gaspra,” where three
notorious women who had been banished from the Russian Court at
St. Petersburg took refuge and not only repented of their sins but
attempted the impossible task of converting the Tartar population to
Christianity. One of them was the Princess Galatzin, whose amours were
more notorious than those of Catherine the Great; another was the
Baroness de Krudener, who told Alexander I, to his face, in a crowded
ballroom, that he was an awful sinner. The third was the Countess de la
Mothe, who was publicly whipped and branded in Paris as an accomplice
in the theft of a diamond necklace from Marie Antoinette.
Another beautiful estate in that neighbourhood, which belonged to Gen.
Leo Naryshkin, was laid out by Joachim Tascher, said to have been a
natural half-brother of Josephine, the first empress of France. When
Napoleon became emperor, Josephine offered Tascher a position suitable
to his rank and relationship, but he declined and begged to be allowed
to remain in obscurity, to follow his favourite pursuit of gardening.
Alexander III, emperor of Russia and father of the present czar, died
October 20, 1894, in a pretty little villa near Yalta, on the southern
coast of the Crimea, overlooking the Black Sea. It was his favourite
residence, as it was that of his father, Alexander II, before him. At
Livadia he could throw off those dignities which hedge about a king,
and live like an ordinary man. A stately chapel of the Byzantine type
of architecture, with five gilded domes, stands on the hillside near
by as a memorial to this man whose piety and devotion were among his
most marked characteristics. He was a stern, relentless, implacable
autocrat, very different in character and disposition from his father
and his son, men of amiable disposition and great forbearance.
It is a singular fact that every alternate czar has been a tyrant and
every other one a broad-minded man of liberal views. But Alexander
III was embittered by the assassination of his father, who was
the most generous and benevolent of all the czars. He emancipated
the serfs and gave them land and a draft of a constitution giving
Russia a parliamentary government, which he intended to confer as a
voluntary gift upon his subjects, lay upon his desk the morning he was
assassinated. He was gentle and considerate and unselfish as McKinley,
and died the same way. No assassination was ever less excusable.
Alexander III was naturally of a reticent, morbid disposition, without
the slightest sense of humour, but lofty aspirations and a keen
appreciation of his imperial prerogatives and power. He conceived it to
be his duty to punish the entire 135,000,000 population of Russia for
the crime of a few fanatics, and thus arrested the progress of Russian
civilization during the entire period of his reign. He even went so far
as to issue an edict forbidding the education of the peasants, because
it made them discontented, closing all the schools in Russia to the
children of the labouring class and permitting the attendance only of
those whose parents had a certain income and paid a certain amount of
taxes. This decree was revoked by his son Nicholas II, who has few of
his characteristics, and is as different from him as one man can be
from another.
Alexander III sent more poor creatures to Siberia than all the other
czars. He was neither merciful nor just; his heavy hand fell upon
the innocent as well as the guilty. No modern monarch has caused so
much grief, so much suffering, or was guilty of greater cruelty and
injustice in his administration.
No Oriental king of the Middle Ages was more fond of display, or
more rigorous in his requirements concerning the ceremonies and the
etiquette of his court, yet the man loved to escape his imperial
splendour and seek rest and recreation in a cottage of not more than
twenty rooms, with his wife and children and a few Tartar servants.
There he lived the simple life and enjoyed it. There was no ceremony;
there was no etiquette; there was no imperial prestige to maintain.
There he became the husband and father instead of the king.
In the palaces of St. Petersburg he was always surrounded by Cossacks,
policemen, and detectives, even in the family circle, and never crossed
the threshold of his apartments without a military guard. At Livadia,
fearless of anarchists, he wandered about the village with his wife and
children, talked familiarly with the Tartar peasants, and often visited
the villas of his friends. There was a guard at the gate and a sentinel
at the door of the cottage, but he never had an escort when he went out
for his walks or drives.
There are thousands of more spacious and pretentious country villas
in Russia; there are hundreds of thousands in the United States more
beautiful, more luxurious and better equipped than that in which he
lived and died. Every village in America has homes equally elegant
and comfortable, but Alexander III found it the most satisfactory and
the most restful of all the places in the world. In the little red
cottage, with its broad verandas and its walls half hidden with vines,
he could forget the affairs of state that made his reign so stormy.
Alexander II, his father, fled to Livadia every winter for two or three
months for relaxation from the stern and tragic life he was compelled
to lead. The present czar has spent his happiest days there, also, and
during his childhood was brought every winter to escape the arctic
climate of St. Petersburg, with his governesses and tutors, and the
rooms which he and his brothers occupied remain very much as they
were in those days. They open immediately off a small hallway in the
centre of the cottage on the ground floor, and the windows, which are
only breast high from the lawn, overlook the garden. They are small
and cosy, but very plain. Boyish traps are still hanging on the walls;
tennis rackets, fencing foils and masks and rubber-soled canvas shoes.
There is an ordinary hat rack, a table and two plain chairs in the
entrance hall. Two or three hats that belonged to Alexander III still
remain where he hung them when he wore them last. The children’s
schoolroom and the bedrooms of the boys occupy one half of the ground
floor. On the opposite side is a dining-room, a very plain apartment,
with a polished floor and a rug and sideboards, carving tables,
high-backed mahogany chairs and a table that will seat twenty.
Back of the dining-room is the kitchen, and over it, on the second
floor, is the drawing-room with handsome and tasteful but inexpensive
furniture. There is a grand piano, a Swiss music box, upon a stand
in the corner; a collection of fans and other feminine trifles in a
cabinet; several presentation books and albums, and rather ordinary
paintings upon the walls.
There is a suite of three rooms for the emperor and a corresponding
suite for the empress. Her sitting-room is very pretty, with a Brussels
carpet on the floor and hangings and upholstery of cretonne. Her
bedroom is furnished with the same material and is similar to those
you can find in every country-house of well-to-do people and much more
convenient than any palace apartment I have ever seen. The bedstead
is of brass with a canopy and curtains of cretonne. Between the
sitting-room and the bedroom is a dressing-room, with several large
wardrobes and a storeroom for linen with chests of drawers.
The czar’s library contains two desks of plain, ordinary white oak, one
for himself and one for his secretary or military aide. It is furnished
with substantial leather tufted furniture, cretonne hangings and an
ordinary Brussels carpet upon the floor, while the walls are hung with
family photographs, including a group taken on the front porch of the
cottage when the late King Christian, Queen Alexandra of England, King
George of Greece and other relatives of the Dowager Empress were there.
There are several photographs of Queen Alexandra of England and King
George of Greece about the house. The affection and devotion for which
the royal family of Denmark is famous is illustrated by the number of
photographs that are scattered around.
The czar’s sleeping chamber is a large, square room with an outlook
upon the Black Sea. It is left exactly as it was when he died. His bed,
a large four-poster with two mattresses, is shielded from the light by
a high screen, and beside it is a small iron camp bedstead that was
used by his nurse. In the corner is a cabinet bathtub, which closes up
like a settee; in the centre is a table, with several Russian books,
reviews and newspapers--the last he read. There is a sofa behind it
with a pillow embroidered with the imperial arms, where he rested in
his last days. Beside one window is a large easy chair, in tufted blue
leather, much worn, and rather shabby, in which Alexander III sat when
he breathed his last. He died of a combination of Bright’s disease and
dropsy, and his lungs and heart were drowned. For several days before
his death he was unable to lie down, and slept in this chair. It stands
exactly where it was when he died, and where his feet rested a cross of
olive-wood has been embedded in the floor.
The rooms of Alexander II in the winter palace at St. Petersburg and
those of Nicholas I, the iron czar, are preserved in the same way, and
will never be occupied again. But no emperor ever died in such simple,
homelike surroundings as Alexander III.
The widow has never been there since she left for St. Petersburg
with the funeral cortege, but Nicholas II, the son, always spends a
portion of the year in Livadia, usually three months in the fall. The
old vine-covered villa, which has been photographed and used as an
illustration for books and magazines so often, has been torn down,
and a splendid palace of white sandstone, to cost $750,000, has been
constructed on plans prepared by Architect Krasnoff of Yalta.
There are 700 acres in the estate, 250 acres under cultivation and the
rest in park. Nearly 200 acres are in vineyards, and the best wine of
the Crimea is said to come from the emperor’s grapes. It is not
made on the place, but the grapes are hauled to a wine press in the
neighbourhood.
[Illustration: Villa at Livadia in which Alexander III died]
The estate is surrounded by a high barbed-wire fence, draped with
honeysuckle and creepers. It lies between the main highway and the
Black Sea, and people who drive that way can get a very good idea of
the establishment--the groups of stables, the cottages for aide-de-camp
and members of the household, the conservatories, the chapel, and other
buildings which are scattered over the place, and half hidden in the
foliage. There is an especial residence for the cabinet minister, who
attends the czar, and apartments for the entertainment of other members
of the government who are brought here on official business. Nothing,
however, is pretentious. Many summer homes in the United States surpass
it in every respect, but Livadia will always be sacred to Russians
because of its associations with Alexander III.