Page:The Boy Travellers in the Russian Empire.djvu/510

504 once contained a hundred and fifty English and French ships; it seemed that there was hardly room for a third of that number.

On their return journey they passed a party with a broken tarantasse. They stopped a moment and offered any assistance in their power, but finding they could be of no use they did not tarry long. When they reached Sebastopol the sun had gone down in the west, and the stars

twinkled in the clear sky that domed the Crimea. The next morning they rambled about the harbor and docks of the city, and a little past noon were steaming away in the direction of Odessa.

A day was spent in this prosperous city, which has a population of nearly two hundred thousand, on a spot where at the end of the last century there was only a Tartar village of a dozen houses, and a small fortress of Turkish construction. Odessa has an extensive commerce, and the ships of all nations lie at its wharves. Its greatest export trade is in wheat, which goes to all parts of the Mediterranean, and also to England. The Black Sea wheat formerly found a market in America, but all that has been changed in recent years through the development of the wheat-growing interest in our Western States and on the Pacific Coast.

Immediately on their arrival they sent their passports to receive the