Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/621

Rh bombarded and occupied by the Allies in September 1855. Eupatoria, formerly Khezleve&quot; and Kozloff, is the great emporium for salt, and during Turkish occupation was the principal port in the Crimea ; its inhabitants are chiefly Karaims, who have here a &quot; spiritual institution &quot; under their Gahau. Balaclava, the Symvolon limen of Strabo, Cembalo of the Genoese, is a small Greek fishing village in a splendid land-locked harbour to the east of Sevastopol, remarkable as being occupied by the British during the war. Yalta is a small but fashionable watering-place on the south coast, with excellent hotels and many inducements to visitors, the season lasting from May to September. Near Yalta is Livadia, the residence of the empress, and other imperial properties.

The most valuable commercial production is salt, of which the yearly supply is 15,000,000 pouds (a poud = 36 fib English). Salt entering Russia is excised at 30 copecks (9d.) per poud, and the entire revenue to the Government from the salt-lakes in the Crimea is estimated at .1,785,714. There are no manufactures, but the principal articles gf export are wine, kit (i.e., fuller s earth), honey, wax, hides, lambskins, and wool. A reddish marble from quarries near Tchadyr-dagh is exported in small quantities. Com munications in the peninsula are maintained by excellent post-roads and bridle-paths ; and a railroad which connects Sevastopol, Baghtchasarai, and Sympheropol with the south of Russia was opened for traffic in January 1875.

The earliest known inhabitants of the Crimea were the Cimmerians, who were driven out by the Scythians about 680-631 B.C., and fled into Asia Minor, leaving only a remnant, who took refuge in the mountains and were after wards known as the Tauri. These appear to have been a savage people, from the fact that all strangers that landed, or were cast on their coast, were sacrificed to the virgin goddess Iphigenia, afterwards apparently identified with a goddess of their own mythology by the Grecians, who named the country the Tauric peninsula after their pre decessors, whence the Russian name Taurida. The numerous crypts existing about the rocky heights were in all probability the troglodyte caves of the Tauri ; in some parts they were converted into hermitages and retreats by the Greeks during Byzantine occupation, and were again so utilized by their successors in the last century ; these caves are to be seen at Ak-Kaya, Tepe-Kerman, Katch-Kalen, Tcherkess-Kerman, Mangoup, Mangoush, Tchyfout-Kaleh, Inkerman, &c. In the year 658 B.C. the Heracleotes crossed the Axine, as the Black sea was then called, and founded a colony near where is now Sevastopol, the territory they occupied becoming known as the Heracleotic Chersonese, to distin guish it from the Tauric Chersonese. The city of Chersonesus flourished under its own free institutions dur ing the space of 1000 years, and even longer, though it became a dependency of the Eastern empire ; it was taken in 988 by the Russian grand-prince Vladimir, who there received baptism, and was completely destroyed in 1363, by Olgerd, grand prince of Lithuania. In the 7th century B.C., other Grecians, the Milesians, settled at Theodosia, and later at Nymphseum and Panticapaeum (Kertch), which last city became their metropolis under the authority of an archon, and afterwards of a king, whose dominion, the kingdom of the Bosphorus, included Phanagoria on the eastern shore of the Cimmerian Bosphorus, a city founded with others at the same time as Panticapseum, and the emporium of the people on the Asiatic shores of the strait. Parisades, sovereign in 115 B.C., being hard pressed by the Scythians, voluntarily ceded his dominion to Mithridates, king of the Pontus, whose son Pharnaces, after his own downfall, was permitted by Rome to assume the sovereignty of the Bosphorus, a sovereignty that continued until a late period tinder the protection of the Roman empire. The peninsula was overrun successively by the Alans (62 A. P.), the Goths, whose descendants, peaceably employed in agri culture, remained until the early part of the 14th century, the Huns in 376, the Khozars in the 8th century, expelled by the Byzantines in 101 6, and the Kiptchaks, who possessed themselves, about 1050, of Khazary, by which name the peninsula was called, after the Khozars, they being in their turn expelled by the Mongols, about 1237. Penticapseum, or Cerchio (Kertch), was fora time (1343), occupied by the Venetians, their successors being the Genoese, who had established themselves at Caffa (Theodosia) in 1263-67, and to whom the seaboard known as Gothia, extending to Cembalo (Balaclava), was ceded in 1315. Cembalo, Soldaia (Soudak), and Caffa were strongly fortified by them, Caffa being the centre of an extensive Asiatic trade that included Persia, India, and China. The ruins of the Genoese fortifications still remain. After the destruction of the Golden Horde by Tamerlane, the Tatars of the Crimea elected, about 1428, a khan for themselves, a descendant through Toktamish of Jinghis Khan, one Hadgy, who assumed the name of Ghyrey, his capital being at Solkhat, now Esky-Crim. This khanate continued independent until the conquest of Grim by Mahomet II. (1475), who made the khan prisoner, and sent the Genoese and other Christians into servitude and slavery. The khans, thenceforth the vassals of the sultans, were tit the head of a warlike race, by whom the Russian provinces were being continually devastated until the year 1777, when Suwaroff dispersed the troops of Dyvlett Ghyrey, who fled to the Caucasus, and the usurper Selim Ghyrey ascended the throne under the protection of Catherine II. He was, however, forced to appeal to Russia for succour against revolt amongst his own subjects, and the Crimea was eventually annexed to the Russian empire by order of the empress, August 1, 1783, the treaty for its cession by the Porte being signed January 9, 1784. The Crimea was occupied by the allied forces of Great Britain, France, and Sardinia during the Russo-Turkish war of 1853-56. The British and French troops landed near Eupatoria, September 14, 1854, and did not evacuate the peninsula until July 12, 1856, during which period were fought the battles of the Alma, Tchernaya, Balaclava, and Inkerman, and the formidable fortress of Sevastopol was reduced by siege.

 CRIMINAL LAW. A crime is an offence which the law punishes directly, as distinguished from an offence which it punishes indirectly by giving an action for damages to the person injured. The criminal or penal law is that portion of the law which deals with crimes. Sometimes it is attempted to distinguish crimes fom civil injuries by saying that the former are offences against the state, the latter offences against individuals, or again by saying that the former are prosecuted by the state, the latter by private persons. But all illegal acts are offences against the state, and in England the state is not, nominally at least, the prosecutor of criminal offences. Civil injuries, or torts, as they are called in the law of England, are offences for which the injured person may sue in a court of justice. Torts and crimes do not thereforo necessarily exclude each other, for the same act may be both a tort and a crime in the sense that the injured person may sue for damages, and the offender may likewise be prosecuted and punished. Further, it should be observed 