mouth of the Don; Taganrog, Mariupol or Marianopolis, and
Berdianski, on the north coast of the Sea of Azof, where Greek
colonies are flourishing; Kherson, at the mouth of the Dnieper;
Nicolaief, at the mouth of the Bug; and others. Odessa was thus
reduced to the trade of the region to the west of the last-named
river, having lost that of the provinces of Poltava, Kharkof, Kursk,
Orel, Ekaterinoslaf, etc., and only retaining Kherson, Bessarabia,
Volhynia, Kief, etc., which would still be sufficient for her commercial
well-being.

But Odessa is threatened with a new and far more formidable rival
in Sebastopol. Sebastopol, with all its inlets, is by far the most
perfect harbour in the Black Sea, and has the inestimable advantage
that it never freezes, while in Odessa the ice brings all trade
to a standstill for two or three weeks every winter, and all the
ports of Azof and the mouths of the rivers are frozen from November
to March or even mid-April. Sebastopol has the additional advantage
of being in the most direct and nearest communication by rail with
Kharkof, the very heart of the Black Earth Country, and with Moscow,
the centre of the Russian commercial and industrial business.

The people in Sebastopol have hopes that the Imperial Government,
giving up all thought of bringing back their great Black Sea naval
station from Nicolaief to its former seat, may not be unwilling that
their fine harbour be turned to the purposes of trading enterprise,
and even to favour it for a few years with the privileges of a free
port.

[Illustration: SEBASTOPOL.]

The citizens of Odessa, on the other hand, scout such expectations
as over-sanguine, if not quite chimerical, laugh to scorn the idea
that the Government may at any time lay aside its intention of
going back with its naval establishment to Sebastopol; and, in
that case, they contend that the juxtaposition of a commercial
with an Imperial naval port would be as monstrous a combination
as would be in France that of Marseilles and Toulon, or in England
that of Portsmouth and Liverpool, in one and the same place.

They add that the railway between Moscow and Sebastopol is
ill-constructed and almost breaking down; that, although it is
by some hundred miles shorter than that from Odessa to Moscow,
the express and mail trains are so arranged that the most rapid
communication between north and south is effected between Odessa
and St. Petersburg, which route is travelled over i