CHARLES.  “There are several gulfs; but I do not know of any islands, in the Black Sea.  There is a peninsula attached to Russia, which contains the towns of Kafa, Aknetchet, Sevastopol, and Eupatoria:  it lies between the Sea of Asof and the Gulf of Perecop.  The principal gulfs are the Gulf of Baba, the Gulf of Samson, the Gulf of Varna, and the Gulf of Foros.”

MR. BARRAUD.  “The peninsula you mention, Charles, is the Crimea, which possesses a most delicious climate, although lying contiguous to the Putrid Sea, which bounds it on the north.  There is an island in the Euxine,—­the Island Leuce, or Isle of Achilles, also called the Isle of Serpents.  It is asserted by the ancients to have been presented to Achilles by his mother Thetis.  In the Gulf of Perecop there is also another island, called Taman, which contains springs of naphtha.”

MR. WILTON.  “The principal port on the Black Sea is Odessa.  It ranks next in Russia after the two capitals of the empire, but is not a desirable residence, being subject to hurricanes and other evils, of which dust is undoubtedly the greatest.  A learned French writer[6] says:  ’Dust here is a real calamity, a fiend-like persecutor that allows you not a moment’s rest.  It spreads out in seas and billows that rise with the least breath of wind, and envelop you with increasing fury, until you are stifled and blinded, and incapable of a single movement.’  The same writer describes a curious phenomenon he witnessed in Odessa:  ’After a very hot day in 1840, the air gradually darkened about four in the afternoon, until it was impossible to see twenty paces before one.  The oppressive feel of the atmosphere, the dead calm, and the portentous color of the sky, filled every one with deep consternation, and seemed to betoken some fearful catastrophe.  The thermometer attained the height of 104 deg.  Fahrenheit.  The obscurity was then complete.  Presently the most furious tempest imagination can conceive burst forth; and when the darkness cleared off, there was seen over the sea what looked like a waterspout of prodigious depth and breadth, suspended at a height of several feet above the water, and moving slowly away until it dispersed at last at a distance of many miles from the shore.  The eclipse and the waterspout were nothing else than dust; and that day Odessa was swept cleaner than it will probably ever be again.’”

[Footnote 6:  Xavier Hommaire de Hell.]

MRS. WILTON.  “Such a description is quite sufficient to drive the weary traveller to seek shelter; and I think we have had enough of other places for to-night.  Let us take our own at the supper-table, and refresh ourselves after the voyage, for we have reason to congratulate each other on the success of our plan; hitherto, there has been no halting for lack of a finger-post, and I hope we shall be as well prepared at future meetings, and be enabled to accomplish as much as we have this evening.”