grotesque attire, crowd the shores.  Now the pinnacles and the battlements of a great city rise to view.  Armies were gathered at several points to entertain the imperial pleasure-party with all the pomp and pageantry of war.  At Pultowa they witnessed the maneuverings of a battle, with its thunderings and uproar and apparent carnage—­the exact representation of the celebrated battle of Pultowa, which Peter the Great gained on the spot over Charles XII. of Sweden.

The Emperor Joseph had been invited to join this party, and, with his court and retinue, was to meet them at Kherson, near the mouth of the Dneister, and accompany the empress to the Crimea.  But, perhaps attracted by the splendor of the water excursion, he struck across the country in a north-east direction, by the way of Lemberg, some six hundred miles, to intercept the flotilla and join the party on the river.  But the water of the river suddenly fell, and some hundred miles above Kherson, the flotilla ran upon a sand bar and could not be forced over.  The empress, who was apprised of the approach of the emperor, too proud to be found in such a situation, hastily abandoned the flotilla, and taking the carriages which they had with them, drove to meet Joseph.  The two imperial suites were soon united, and they swept on, a glittering cavalcade, to Kherson.  Joseph and Catharine rode in a carriage together, where they had ample opportunity of talking over all their plans of mutual aggrandizement.  As no one was permitted to listen to their conversations, their decisions can only be guessed at.

They entered the city of Kherson, then containing about sixty thousand inhabitants, surrounded by all the magnificence which Russian and Austrian opulence could exhibit.  A triumphal arch spanned the gate, upon which was inscribed in letters of gold, “The road to Byzantium.”  Four days were passed here in revelry.  The party then entered the Crimea, and continued their journey as far as Sevastopol, where the empress was delighted to find, within its capacious harbor, many Russian frigates at anchor.  Immense sums were expended in furnishing entertainments by the way.  At Batcheseria, where the two sovereigns occupied the ancient palace of the khans, they looked out upon a mountain in a blaze of illumination, and apparently pouring lava floods from its artificial volcanic crater.

Joseph returned to Vienna, and immediately there was war—­Austria and Russia against Turkey.  Joseph was anxious to secure the provinces of Bosnia, Servia, Moldavia and Wallachia, and to extend his empire to the Dneister.  With great vigor he made his preparations, and an army of two hundred thousand men, with two thousand pieces of artillery, were speedily on the march down the Danube.  Catharine was equally energetic in her preparations, and all the north of Europe seemed to be on the march for the overthrow of the Ottoman empire.