The method of stacking hay which is used on the south coast is quite peculiar to that part of the Crimea. It is raised upon poles or low trees, five or six feet from the ground. This is probably done to preserve it from wet, in places where the constant descent of water from the mountains would otherwise render it liable to spoil. A Tatar mill is the most simple piece of mechanism that can be conceived. Few windmills are employed. The watermills are all undershot, and being worked by very small streams, seldom move above half the year: for in the height of summer they frequently stand still from drought, and in winter from frost. At these times, it is often necessary to send corn to be ground to the distance of forty or fifty versts. These mills perform their office so badly, that the best wheat which can be procured will not give a fine flour. The only mode of dressing it known here is by sieves at home, and all the fine flour in use throughout the southern governments of Russia is brought from Moscow.* * Distant from Akmetchet one thousand three hundred and ninety-seven versts. It sells at from seven to ten roubles per pood, while the best home flour, undressed, is bought at from twelve to twenty-five kopeeks the oka. Rye-flour is universally used by the Tatars in the manufacture of bread, and wheat-flour in that of pastry. The small quantity of good wheat which they rear is almost all sold to purchase the few necessaries which they have occasion to buy. The soil of the Crimea is various. In some places it is a rich loamy clay, but I believe far the greater part is shallow, rocky, or gravelly; and from the heat of the sun, the grass is burnt up very early in the season. Of corn the average crop is said to be eight for one; I cannot, however, think that, even in favourable years, it exceeds this amount, and I fear that deficient crops are more frequent than abundant ones. The harvest takes place as early as the end of June or beginning of July, and since the rapidity with which the corn is ripened renders it extremely dry and brittle, it is customary to sow bearded wheat, which is less liable to shake. Much of what is called Arnoot wheat is sown by the Russians, Bulgarians, &c.; but for the most part winter wheat of a very inferior quality, rye, some barley, a few oats, or a little hemp, flax, or millet, form the extent of Tatar cultivation.* The climate is not so temperate as that of England, the heat in summer being much greater, and the cold in winter infinitely more severe.† The * It is remarkable that barley and oats, which in English husbandry follow in the succession of crops, never prosper so well in the Crimea as when sown on the same land, year after year, for eight, nine, or even ten years, unintermittingly. Arnoot is never sown on fresh land, unless it be ploughed in autumn, the spring rains being, in the most favourable seasons, insufficient to supply the requisite quantity of moisture. + These observations having been written on the northern side of the ridge of mountains which skirt the coast of the Crimea, are not intended to apply to the small, but,beautiful tract, which slopes to the sea on their southern exposure. |