Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/43

ORIGIN OF THE WAR OF 1853 THE CZAR AND THE SULTAN. CHAPTER I. When this century had half run its course, and chap. even during some few months afterwards, the ' peninsula which divides the Euxine from the Sea of Azoff was an almost forgotten land, lying out of the chief paths of merchants and travellers, and far away from all the capital cities of Christendom. Rarely went thither any one from Paris, or Vienna, or Berlin : to reach it from London was a harder task than to cross the Atlantic ; and a man of office receiving in this distant province his orders despatched from St Petersburg, was the servant of masters who governed him from a distance of a thousand miles. Along the course of the little rivers which seamed the ground, there were villages and aarrow belts of tilled land, with .-aniens, and fruitful VOL. I. A