n less than
three days.

Whichever of the contending parties may have the best of the argument,
there is no doubt that, were even the Government to be favourable
to the wishes of the people of Sebastopol, there would be no just
reason for jealousy between the two cities, for Odessa has already
proved that she can manage to grow richer than ever upon one-half
of the trade of Southern Russia, while Sebastopol might safely
rely on carrying on the other half--that other half which is now
already in the hands of Taganrog, Mariupol, Nicolaief, etc. For
all these ports of Azof and the mouths of the rivers, besides being
closed by ice for at least four months in the year, are so shallow
that no amount of dredging can keep back the silting sands, and
vessels must anchor at distances of ten to twenty and even thirty
miles outside the harbours.

_THE DON COSSACKS_

_THOMAS MICHELL_

Coming from the north, the first town of any importance in Southern
Russia is Kursk, three hundred and thirty-five miles from Moscow
in an almost direct line, the railway passing through the cities
of Tula (the Russian Birmingham), and Orel, the centre of a rich
agricultural district connected by rail, on the west, with Riga
on the Baltic, and on the south-east with Tsaritzin on the Volga.
Authentic records attest the existence of Kursk in 1032, and in
1095 it was held by Isiaslaf, son of Vladimir Monomachus, from
whom it passed alternately to the Princes of Chernigof and of
Pereyaslasl. In the Thirteenth Century it was razed to the ground
by the Tartars. In 1586 the southern frontiers of Moscovy were
fortified, and Kursk became one of the principal places on that
line of defence against the Crimean Tartars and the Poles. Its
disasters and sufferings as a military outpost ceased only towards
the end of the Seventeenth Century, after Little Russia (the more
southerly districts watered by the Dnieper), submitted to the Tsar
Alexis.

We are now almost in the heart of the _Chernozem_, or black soil
country, so called from the rich black loam of which its surface
is composed to a depth of two and three yards and more. These vast
plains were known to Herodotus, Strabo, and other ancient geographers
only in their present _Steppe_, or flat and woodless condition. It
is a great relief to the eye to see at last a handsomely-built
city like Kursk, perched, relatively to the surrounding flatness,
on an elevation and almost smothered in the verdure o