cliffs,
between 1,500 feet and 2,000 feet high, a great wall riven into
every variety of fantastic shapes of bastions, towers, and pyramids,
all bare and rugged, crumbling here and there into huge boulders,
strewn along the slopes down to the road, across the road, and
further down to the water-edge, a scene which might befit the
battle-field of the Titans against the gods; and on the left the
wide expanse of the waters, with a coast like a fringe of little
glens and creeks and headlines, and the sun's glitter on the waves
like Dante's "_tremolar della marina_" on the shore of Purgatory.

Between the road and the sea far below us, in the distance, embosomed
in woods still untouched by the autumn frosts, lay the marine villas
of Livadia, Orianda, Alupka, etc., very Edens, where on their first
annexation of the Crimea the wealthy Russians sought a refuge against
the horrors of their wintry climate; more recently, Imperial
residences--Livadia, the darling of the late Emperor; Orianda,
now a mere wreck from the recent conflagration, the seat of the
Grand Duke Constantine; Alupka, the abode of Prince Woronzoff, the
son of the benevolent genius of these districts, the road-maker,
the patron of Yalta, the second founder of Odessa.

A scene of irresistible enchantment is the whole of what the Russians
emphatically call their "southern coast." And, as if to enhance
its charm by contrast, everything changes as you pass the Baidar
Gate, and when you have crossed the Baidar Valley the balmy air
becomes raw and chill, the bald mountains tame and common-place,
and the long descent is through an ashy-gray country, swept over by
an icy blast, saddened by a lowering sky, unrelieved by a flower, a
bush, or a cottage. So marvellous is the power of mere position, so
great the difference between the two sides of the same mountain-wall!
You pass at once from a garden to a steppe.

Away from these sheltering rocks, away from the southern slopes
of the Caucasian ridges, you are in Russia. The only mountains
throughout all the rest of the Tsar's European territories are
the Urals, which nowhere reach even the heights of the Apennines,
which do not form everywhere a continuous chain, and which run in
almost a straight line from north to south. From the icy pole the
wind sweeping over the frozen ocean and the snowy wastes of the
northern provinces finds nowhere a hindrance to its cruel blasts,
and spreads its chill over the whole land with su