Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/67

 Our drive around the city was hardly completed when the sunset gun of the fortress rang out and we sat down to an ex- cellent dinner at the cosmopolitan restaurant near the Hotel Kist. The hour waxed late in conversation, with the key-note of East and West running through the talk, and it hardly seemed as if sleep had begun before the fortress gun boomed out once more with the announcement of dawn. The sun had not climbed far above the horizon before a three-horsed troika drew up at the door, and we took our seats to scurry (a Rus- sian word, by the way) on our long drive of more than fifty miles across the lower end of the Crimea and over the Euxine road to Yalta.

The bells at the horses' throats rang out merrily in the clear morning air as we dashed out of the city into the rolling coun- try beyond, and the crested lark caught up the note in a matin of good cheer. Undulating plain, dale, hilltop, and steep de- cline were passed by in succession at a rapid gallop, when sud- denly some gravestones and a distant monument rounded up my wandering thoughts with a sharp turn, for we were nearing the historic scene of Balaklava. ' Half a league, half a league, half a league onward ' I had learned in schoolboy days from my mother's volume of Tennyson ; but never did I form a real conception of the scene till I saw the gorge between the en- croaching hills with * cannon to right of them, cannon to left of them,' and that ' valley of death ' into which the gallant Six Hundred rode to destruction.

The Tatar village of Ba'idar brought me back from past European memories to present Oriental impressions, and after that to an enjoyment of some of the most beautiful scenery that nature has anywhere to show. Not that the humble Tatar hamlet has that to offer, but near to it, and taking from the village its name. Portal of Baidar, is a gateway of stone that opens into a wonderful vista. As one looks through the deep frame of the picture, there suddenly bursts upon the vision a chaos of skyey crags, scarped rocks, sheer declivities,

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