CHAPTER XVI

ODESSA--CAPITAL OF SOUTHERN RUSSIA

We crossed from Sevastopol to Odessa by steamer in about eighteen hours, stopping to discharge cargo and passengers at the ancient port of Eupatoria. The Greek name denotes the origin of that town, which flourished centuries before the Christian era, but is now of comparative insignificance. In the morning we found ourselves in a crowded harbour under a bluff 200 or 250 feet high, crowned with several monumental buildings and presenting a noble front to the sea. At the extreme western end of the town, beyond the expanse of foliage of Alexander II Park, are the buildings of the industrial exposition, which is now in progress. Their fantastic forms are so white that they look like the fancy ornaments with which confectioners decorate wedding cake.

Odessa is comparatively a new town, being only a little more than a hundred years old, and entirely a Russian creation. The Turks had a fortress here called Khodja-bey, which was carried by assault in 1778 by the Russian forces under General Ribas during the war with Turkey, which Catherine II provoked for conquest. The title to the property was conveyed by the Great Turk to the czar of all the Russias by the treaty of Jassy, December 29, 1791. It graciously pleased her imperial majesty to utilize the natural advantages of the location for defence of commerce, and she ordered a town created here. General Ribas laid it out and built the first house, and her majesty, who was always fond of classical names, commanded that it should be called Odessus, from the Odyssey of Homer, which mentions this place.

In 1803 the Duke de Richelieu, a refugee from the French Revolution, who came to Russia and was given an important commission in the army, was appointed governor. The population then numbered only a few thousand, but his enterprise and taste made it a beautiful and important city. Upon his death, Count Woronzoff, afterward prince, to whom I have alluded several times in connection with the Crimea, took up the work where Richelieu left it off, and proved himself a remarkable builder. He founded the university, the public library, the museum, the municipal opera house; and schools of medicine attached to the hospitals were encouraged and subsidized by him. He gave an impetus to trade and commerce which lasted for half a century; he built roads into the interior, dredged the harbour, created docks, and encouraged the introduction of profitable industries.

Woronzoff was born in St. Petersburg in 1782, and was the son of a distinguished statesman. His father was ambassador to London during his boyhood, which caused him to be educated there, and he took a degree at Cambridge University. Returning to Russia he obtained a commission in the army and commenced his military career as a subaltern in a Caucasian regiment commanded by a famous Georgian, Prince Tzytzyanoff. He proved a brilliant soldier, was promoted rapidly and wore the epaulets of a major general before he was thirty years old. In the war with Napoleon he commanded a division of grenadiers and during the retreat of the French, followed closely upon their flank to the German frontier.

At the conclusion of the war he went to England and remained until he was called by the emperor to undertake the organization of the government of Bessarabia, and shortly after succeeded the Duke de Richelieu as governor of Odessa. He was afterward governor of the Caucasus and the Crimea, and in all three provinces his memory is revered and many public works exist as monuments to his enterprise and foresightedness.

The most conspicuous object on the bluff that overlooks the harbour of Odessa is a mansion built by Prince Woronzoff and occupied by him for many years. It is of classical design, with walls of granite, and is surrounded by limited but handsomely embellished grounds. The chief feature is a pergola of lofty granite columns reached from the house, and rising from a little promontory that projects from the bluff. It can be seen for a long distance and invests with a classical character the earliest impression of the city. The mansion is spacious, containing thirty large apartments, and is entered through an extensive courtyard under a monumental gate. For several years it has been occupied as a school for engineers.

In 1810, when the first census was taken, Odessa had 9,000 population; in 1910 it has 520,000 but there has been a steady decrease during the last five years, which is due to the rivalry of other ports which are attracting trade because of better harbours, better railway connections and better facilities for doing business. The strong and violent socialistic element in Odessa has also injured the city by frightening away capital and preventing the establishment of manufacturing industries because of the fear of labour strikes.

About 25 per cent. of all the grain exports from Russia were shipped from Odessa until about ten years ago. The total often reached nearly three million tons, but the old-fashioned methods of handling freight, and particularly grain, in use here are so expensive as to be practically prohibitory. Sometimes the elevator charges are as high as two and a half cents per pood, or thirty-six pounds. Nicolaieff, Kherson and Rostov-on-the-Don have such superior facilities that Odessa cannot recover the trade until she improves her docks and harbour and mechanical appliances for handling freight.

The imperial government has plans for extensive improvements in the harbour of Odessa to furnish suitable facilities for handling the grain, at a total expenditure of ten million dollars. A commission from St. Petersburg and the municipal officials have made thorough surveys and completed designs which have been submitted to the duma for approval and the necessary appropriations. The work will be done under the direction of the minister of commerce and labour at St. Petersburg and will include a breakwater nearly a mile long, costing a million dollars or more, a series of stone wharves and piers costing two millions, railway terminals costing two and a half millions, four grain elevators and conveyors, with a capacity of seventy-two thousand tons, each two millions; granaries, conveyers and other facilities for loading and unloading, one million; an electric light and power plant to cost half a million; filling in and reclaiming land, half a million; and various other features.

Odessa has the reputation of being a very fast city, one of the most immoral communities in Europe, and the young Russians are given to gambling and dissipation of all kinds. At night the streets are brilliantly lighted, and are crowded with promenaders of both sexes. There are many cafés on the sidewalks, in the interior courts of the business section, and in the parks and squares. All night the air is filled with music and laughter, and pleasure-seekers turn night into day. One is inclined to wonder when the crowd of men he sees in the cafés and theatres attend to their business, but when the shops, offices, and banks open in the morning at ten o’clock there seems to be no lack of customers and clerks, and everybody is on the rush.

The Exchange, a handsome building of Oriental architecture, is the centre of activity. The trading takes place in a splendid hall on lines similar to those of the board of trade at Chicago. The remainder of the building is devoted to sample rooms, committee rooms, reading rooms, and other purposes.

As grain is the principal staple of southern Russia, and Odessa is the chief market, all business movements centre around the board of trade. Business is very dull just now; there have been several bad crops; fourteen of the largest flour mills in the city have been closed down for want of wheat to grind, and that has thrown a large number of people out of employment, as well as reduced the volume of business. But this year’s crop is a record breaker and prosperity is expected soon again.

There are more than 200,000 Jews in Odessa--exceeding one third of the entire population--and, as everywhere else, they control the banking, the manufacturing, the export trade, the milling, the wholesale and retail mercantile establishments, and practically everything of an industrial and commercial enterprise. And, naturally, they are hated by the Russians and envied for their success and prosperity. The prejudice against the Jewish population elsewhere as well as here is due to economic rather than religious reasons--simply because they are getting richer and more prosperous, while the Russians are losing ground in all the professions and occupations. They have wasted their capital in bad investments and dissipations and extravagance, and are forced to mortgage their property to the Jews to keep up appearances.

In the meantime the Jews have been securing control of all the profitable enterprises and lines of business in Odessa. Their sons show the same earnestness and zeal in the university that they show in the counting-room. Therefore they make the best doctors and lawyers and engineers, and their services are in demand, while the Russian members of the professions are idly waiting for business. A Russian will employ a Jewish lawyer or doctor or engineer in preference to one of his own race, not because he loves the Jew or desires to encourage him, but simply because he needs him, and recognizes his superiority, his shrewdness, and his success.

The same is true among the working classes. The Russians labourer spends his wages for vodka. The Jew puts his in the savings bank. The Russian labourer never saves anything. The Jew is economical and abstemious, his family live on bread and vegetables, and by keeping good habits they grow strong, while the Russian grows weak. While the proud young Russian is carousing in the cafés chantant, and losing his money in gambling halls, the Jewish young man is busy with his books.

This difference in habits produces the results which exasperate the Russian and drive him to the persecution of his rivals. He considers it an insult to himself and his race whenever he hears of a brilliant achievement or instance of prosperity among the Jews, and the spirit of envy and jealousy so aroused is the cause of persecution.

Odessa is a fine city, one of the finest in Europe, and its proud people are in the habit of comparing it with Paris, Vienna, and Berlin. The streets are wide and well paved and most of them are shaded with double columns of trees. There is no residence section, however, as in many other cities, for everybody lives in an apartment-house, with the lower floor occupied by shops and the upper floors for lodgings and offices. Most people live with their business. You will find a hardware shop, a dairy, a grocery on the ground floor of your dwelling, insurance offices and lawyers scattered through the upper floors, with the households of the tenants in the adjoining rooms. There is no home life, almost everybody lunches and dines at a restaurant, and in the summer months they are mostly on the street. In the winter the weather is very cold. In October house-keepers close the double windows and stop the leaks with cotton batting and padding made for that purpose. This keeps out every particle of fresh air until spring. I have never found a people so afraid of fresh air as the Russians, and that antipathy is very annoying to American and English people who are compelled to occupy the same compartments in railway trains and the same dining and drawing rooms in the hotels.

Another peculiarity is that everybody wears an overcoat of the same weight, summer and winter. No matter how hot it is the men wear long, thick, heavy overcoats over their regular suits. This is especially true of army officers, and it is odd to see a gallant captain in winter apparel walking in the promenade with a graceful young woman in the lightest of embroidered white batiste.

The principal business section of Odessa is noted for its architecture. The public buildings and the hotels are unusually good. The cathedral of the orthodox Greek church, which is placed in the centre of a wide square, where it can be seen to the best advantage, is a splendid example of Byzantine architecture, and the interior furnishings fine examples of gilt carving. There are several highly revered relics--the arms and fingers and teeth of saints.

The municipality erected and owns the opera house, one of the finest in Europe and modeled after that of Paris. A subsidized opera company gives performances twice a week for six months of the year. Around the opera house is a group of interesting buildings. Several of the most important streets of the city focus there. It is the centre of the banking community and exporting business. The city hall is a large building of classic design overlooking the bay, and contains a well-proportioned chamber for the use of the provincial duma or legislature.

Beginning at the city hall and extending for a quarter of a mile or more along a bluff that overlooks the bay is a wide promenade, heavily shaded, that is cool even at noon in the heat of midsummer. There thousands of people gather every evening and spend the twilight walking to and fro, flirting and gossiping and having a good time. On a shelf in the bluff a little below is a large and well-arranged playground for children, maintained by the city, where grown people, except nurses and mothers, are not admitted. Adjoining it is an open-air gymnasium for men, equipped with ample facilities, and that is well patronized also.

Leading from the esplanade to the docks below is a wide stairway of stone, which was built seventy-five years ago, and a continual stream of human beings is surging up and down throughout the day and the night. There are restaurants and cafés on each side, and at the foot several public bathing-houses before you reach the docks.

The principal hotels and cafés front on the promenade, and during the afternoon and evening the music never ceases and the gay crowds never grow less.

Among the other public buildings around the opera house is the Imperial Museum, where a small but remarkable collection of Scythian and Greek antiquities from the Crimea and the coast of the Black Sea have been arranged in excellent taste. It is unique in several respects and the most important collection consists of twenty thousand coins, dating back to the beginning of civilization--Greek, Persian, Scythian, Cimmerian, Taurian, Gothic, Avar, Genoese, Turkish, etc. I am told there are coins in this collection that cannot be found anywhere else, and what makes it the more interesting is that every one of them was dug out of the ground in the Crimea or along the northern shore of the Black Sea. How so many coins of different denominations and different periods of time came to be buried in the earth is a mystery. Perhaps it was due to the carelessness of people who went around with holes in their pockets, scattering silver and gold and copper over the earth as they walked; perhaps they were so much afraid of burglars that they buried their money, or maybe they were overtaken by the wrath of the Almighty, like Mrs. Lot, and the money they carried refused to turn into salt. But it is the actual fact that not only these twenty thousand specimens, mostly prehistoric, were found in the soil at different places but similar money is being dug up every few months.

Opposite the museum is an attractive looking building called the English clubhouse by a sort of official Irish bull. Notwithstanding the name, there isn’t a single Englishman or American in the list of members and no newspaper, magazine, or other publication in the English language can be found in its reading room. This anomaly is due to the opposition of the Russian government to all social organizations among its subjects, for fear of conspiracies and co-operation in resisting the tyranny of laws and the police. When this club was proposed a permit was asked for a social organization on the plan of an English club, and, after due consideration, it was granted for “an English club,” that is, a club similar to those of England. Hence the significance of the name.

There is a German club and an Anglo-American club in the same neighbourhood, to which the English-speaking portion of the population belongs, and a British Sailors’ Institute on the lines of a Y. M. C. A. for the benefit of the crews of the many British steamers which come regularly to Odessa.

In another part of the city the imperial library occupies an imposing building of classic design with several hundred thousand books. The university, which ranks third among educational institutions in Russia, occupies several buildings and has between four thousand and five thousand students. The schools of art, engineering, chemistry, and medicine are celebrated, and the students of medicine have access to several enormous hospitals and charitable institutions for the infirm and defective. I am told that medical science has attained much higher proficiency in the southern provinces than in northern Russia.

There are several military schools, which are needed more than anything else, and are well patronized, for the army is the principal thing here, and when a young man is deciding upon a career he always tries that first. The army grows bigger, the taxes grow higher, the people grow poorer, and labour becomes scarcer in Russia every year. Military rank seems to be essential to happiness and social prestige. Nearly every man you meet on the street or in the hotels and cafés wears a uniform and everybody has a military rank. The school teacher, the apothecary, the lawyer, and doctor, and architect, the clerks in the custom-house, the post-office and city hall--even the convicts in the prisons--wear uniforms, and the registrars of the schools of the university are dressed like major-generals.

There is a boom town in southern Russia with a short history like that of some of our Western cities--yesterday a village, to-day a flourishing centre of commerce and trade, to-morrow the metropolis of the Black Sea. The boomers call it “The Winnipeg of Europe,” but it was named Nicolaieff, in honour of Nicholas, the iron czar, and it is situated at the mouth of the river Bug, at the head of an estuary of the Black Sea, sixty miles north of Odessa and six hours’ sail from that port by the ordinary steamers.

Until 1884 Nicolaieff was a sleepy and insignificant village included in the area which Catherine II wrested from the Great Turk in the war of 1778. During the Crimean War it gained some historical prestige by being a temporary naval station after Sevastopol was corked up. During the latest war between Russia and Turkey in 1877–78 it was used as a rendezvous camp, but there was no business there until 1884, when a railway from Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other cities in the northern part of the empire was extended down to touch the Black Sea, and Nicolaieff became an outlet for the grain of southern Russia and an entrepôt of much imported merchandise.

The convenience of the situation, the superiority of its harbour over that of Odessa, and the favour of the imperial family and the clique of sycophants and speculators who hang around the grand dukes, gave it a preference among shippers, and, since 1898, it has been growing faster than Minneapolis or Seattle. It has jumped from 18,000 to 200,000 population in a decade. During the same time it has acquired the largest shipping business in grain, manganese ore, and coal in the Russian Empire and is booming along in an extraordinary manner. The population is increasing at the rate of ten thousand a year. The volume of business is gaining with even greater rapidity, the value of real estate has advanced 1,000 per cent. during the last eighteen years and the wealth of the community is increasing at a corresponding rate.

The successful prosperity of Nicolaieff, correctly or incorrectly, is attributed to the partiality of the grand dukes and the imperial court, through whose influence much has doubtless been done to encourage the new town, at the expense of Odessa. A deep harbour has been dredged, with a channel of thirty feet; the government has built elevators, and the department of communications has manipulated railway rates and traffic arrangements so as to divert the grain trade in that direction.

It is the unanimous opinion that Nicolaieff is favoured above all other cities by the imperial family and the members of the court, and that the benefits and advantages it enjoys have been entirely due to their influence for two reasons:

First, it is asserted that the grand dukes and their friends are heavily interested in real estate speculations at Nicolaieff and have made enormous sums of money by the advance in the prices of property, which is entirely probable.

Second, it is asserted that the grand dukes and their friends are not only willing but anxious to destroy Odessa because of their hatred of the Jews. Nearly all of the business at Nicolaieff is in the hands of Russians; at Odessa the Jews control everything, and will enjoy the benefit of whatever is done for the improvement and prosperity of this city.

This is a strange reason, but stranger things have happened in Russia and even more civilized countries. The court never comes to Odessa. There is no nobility, no aristocracy, no society here. It is purely a business community, and the wealthy classes are all Jews. It is asserted that the governor-general cannot round up enough civilians of sufficient rank to fill his dinner table, while a large number of impecunious noblemen and poor relations of the proud families of the court have been given lucrative situations at Nicolaieff.

One would think that the grand dukes would keep out of such schemes, after their experience at Manchuria. It was their avarice and grasping disposition that brought on the war with Japan. You will remember that the first clash between the two nations occurred in the Yalu Valley of Korea, where a company organized by the grand dukes was trying to steal the timber.

That is a historical fact, and there may be equal foundation for the reports that are so freely repeated concerning their speculations at Nicolaieff. If so, the future prosperity of the town rests upon an unstable foundation.

The latest story is that the naval headquarters are to be removed from Sevastopol to Nicolaieff, through the influence of the grand ducal circle, but it scarcely seems credible that such a perfect harbour and such enormous investments in shops, docks, warehouses, arsenals, and other plants as have been made there should be abandoned to gratify a few greedy speculators, not to mention the sentimental and historical interest, and the soil that has been sanctified with Russian blood.

Nicolaieff is a very crude and uncouth place at present. It covers an enormous area, with wide streets, well shaded with artificially planted trees, and long blocks of one-story houses. Some of the streets are three miles long and two hundred feet wide, with parking in the centre. As is usual with new towns, living is very expensive. The swells drink champagne instead of beer, and seats at the opera are five rubles instead of two. There are several large department stores filled with the most expensive goods; the jewellery shops are equal to any in St. Petersburg and quite as many diamonds are disposed of. One shop sells nothing but goloshes and during the muddy weather in spring and fall, fifteen clerks are necessary to serve the crowds of customers. There are several large restaurants with orchestra music; café chantants are found on almost every block, with artists from Paris, and they run all night. The most popular resort just now is an American skating rink.

The school-houses are superior to any others in Russia, outside of St. Petersburg or Moscow. There are technical schools for instruction in all the branches; there is a military school, a naval academy and a school of art and architecture. Altogether Nicolaieff is the most up-to-date town in the empire, and has great confidence in the future. The municipality has recently negotiated a loan for $500,000,000 for public improvements--an electric tramway, a new sewerage system, new markets and slaughter-houses, a new court-house and school-houses and a municipal pawnshop.

Kherson, one of the oldest towns on the Black Sea, not far from Nicolaieff, is also prospering mightily under the favour of the imperial government. While its future is not so bright as that of Nicolaieff, a great deal of government money is being spent there for public improvements and it is growing rapidly.

Kherson has a historic interest, because it was the home and is the burial place of the great Prince Potemkin, one of the many lovers of Catherine the Great, who conquered this country for her and added the north coast of the Black Sea to her domain. He died in 1791 and Catherine built a cathedral over his grave. Her crazy son and successor, Paul I, jealous of his mother’s love for Potemkin and his influence over her life, ordered the body to be taken from the splendid marble sarcophagus she had designed for it, and “thrown into a hole under the floor of the crypt, and the crypt filled with earth, and levelled over, so that it will appear as if it had never existed.” This order was obeyed, but in 1854 Nicholas I had the crypt cleared out and the remains of Potemkin restored to the altar of the cathedral and a monument erected in memory of the great prince upon which his principal achievements are inscribed.

There is an extraordinary painting in this cathedral, which illustrates how far the flattery of empresses can be carried. It represents Catherine the Great in the guise of the Holy Virgin, borne to paradise on the back of a double-headed eagle of Russia.

John Howard, the great English philanthropist, is also buried at Kherson, where he had large business interests and spent much time. He died there while on a business visit. There is a monument to his memory, erected by the citizens, bearing this inscription:

JOHN HOWARD Died January 20, 1790 In the fifty-sixth year of his age Vixit Propter Alios Alios Salvos Fecit

Southern Russia is developing very rapidly in population, in wealth, in the area of land cultivated and in the volume of grain harvested and coal produced. The large estates, which have comprised as many as forty thousand and fifty thousand acres, owned by non-residents among the nobility, are being split up into small farms and sold to the tenants who actually work the land, through the assistance of agricultural banks which have been established by the Russian government.

Many wise people think this is a bad policy, because the small farmer cannot handle labour-saving machinery, and thus multiply the capacity of his hands, but the socialistic policy of the duma is to feed the land-hungry, and every peasant demands a farm. There has been no necessity of applying the compulsory clause or going into the courts or commencing proceedings for expropriation. Sufficient land has been offered for sale thus far to satisfy every demand, as in Ireland, and within a few years the entire area of southern Russia will be divided up into “one-mule farms,” which is as much as one family can cultivate.

A good deal is being done in the way of improving the educational facilities of the peasants. There is now a school in almost every village and almost every child fifteen years old and under can read and write. Fifteen years ago a peasant who could read and write was as rare as a lion. The schools are of a very low grade, however, and the number ought to be increased, but the officials who have charge of such matters answer the criticism by saying that they will start a school for every competent teacher that can be found. It is not a question of school-houses, they declare, but a question of teachers. Other people retort that there would be a sufficient number of teachers if the government would offer reasonable wages. The salaries paid are no inducement for competent teachers to offer their services. Educated men and women can earn more money in other occupations.

There is a deep murmur of discontent throughout all the provinces that have been annexed to Russia within the last century, over a recent edict issued by the czar prohibiting instruction in any other but the Russian language and forbidding the organization of literary societies and mutual improvement clubs to study other languages and literature. The same trouble occurred in the Turkish provinces, but as the Russian Empire is a conglomerate of seventy-seven different races, each having its own language, history and traditions, the situation is more serious.

The object of this edict is to Russianize and assimilate these numerous elements and destroy, as far as possible, their individuality and clannishness, but the people consider it an attack upon their race and their traditions, and it has caused an intense prejudice against the Russian national public schools. I am told there has been much improvement in the personnel of the clergy of the Russian church. It is slow, but apparent. The salaries paid to the priests are not sufficient to support their families, and therefore intelligent and educated men are kept out of the priesthood. The ignorance and incompetency of the priests is responsible for a dry rot and an almost universal disintegration in the established church. The intelligent people are losing their respect for the priesthood and drifting away into dissenting sects, which are becoming stronger and more numerous as they attract more intelligent and influential elements of the population.

Everybody will agree that it is a good deal of a job to steal a battleship, but that very thing was done off the harbour of Sevastopol on June 27, 1905, during the Russian revolution. There is a big fleet of war vessels always lying in the inner and outer bay of Sevastopol, strung along for several miles, and some of them go out to maneuvre every day. I counted three battleships, four cruisers, and we could see a swarm of gunboats, torpedo boats and submarines, and three or four big transports tied up at the dock of the naval station. They were painted “battle gray,” or lead colour, and looked very formidable; but the record made by the Russian navy in the war with Japan demonstrated that it can lose ships easier than it can capture them.

The huge, lead-coloured leviathan called _Panteleimon_, in honour of one of the most popular saints in the Russian calendar, was formerly the _Potemkin_, and under that name left Sevastopol for gun practice Sunday morning, June 25, 1905, convoyed by a torpedo boat. On Tuesday the crew sent a round robin to the captain declaring that their food was not fit to eat and that the meat especially was decomposed and unhealthful. At the second meal on that day the crew refused to eat their rations and dumped them overboard. They were mustered on the quarterdeck, where the executive officer ordered those who considered the food wholesome and had taken no part in the demonstration to step to starboard.

A majority of the sailors obeyed the order. The malcontents were then ordered forward, and as they started at a sign from their leader each seized a gun from the pyramids that were stacked upon the deck after the muster, and each began to load with cartridges from his belt. The executive officer commanded them to stack the guns. As they refused to obey, he seized a gun from the nearest man and fired two or three shots with it at the spokesman of the complainants, who fell mortally wounded to the deck, and died in a few moments. The mutineers returned the fire and followed the officers to their cabins, shooting them down as fast as they were overtaken. Several officers who jumped overboard were killed in the water, and it is said that a rapid-fire gun was used upon them. Every officer and midshipman on the _Potemkin_ and about thirty sailors were killed in the mêlée. The officers on the torpedo boat attempted to go to the rescue of their comrades on the _Potemkin_, but the sailors would not permit it, and before the day was over seized their commander and all the other officers, put them into a boat and cut them adrift.

A managing committee of twenty mutineers was organized upon the _Potemkin_, who selected the chief boatswain for navigator, and started for Odessa, where they arrived about daylight the next morning, June 28. They took ashore the body of the sailor who was first killed by the executive officer, placed it in a coffin and left it lying upon a bier in front of a Russian orthodox church near the railway wharves, which is attended chiefly by sailors and workingmen. Inscribed upon a paper pinned to the breast of the dead man was his name, Omelchuk, and a statement that he had been murdered by Captain Gilyarkovsky because he was not willing to eat putrid food. It was also explained that all of the officers of the battleship had been killed by the crew, and that the vessel was under the command of a committee of sailors, who would bombard the city if any attempt was made to take away the body of the sailor or attack the ship.

The news spread rapidly and created a profound sensation. Thousands of workmen gathered around the bier at the church and listened to inflammatory speeches made by anarchists and other agitators, and on the following day began a series of riots lasting all that week; accompanied by murders, looting, arson, highway robbery, blackmail, and the hold-up of all passenger trains on the railroads entering the city. This disturbance was followed by a general strike in which the strikers set fire to warehouses, elevators and other buildings along the dock, seizing the cargoes of several steamers and throwing them into the sea. Almost the entire docks of Odessa were swept with fire, and many of the rioters, drunk with wine and other liquors found in looting, are said to have perished in the flames. The exact number of killed during the disorders has never been ascertained, but is estimated at six hundred men, with a few women and children. The financial loss and damage done to property amounted to several millions of dollars.

While this was going on the stolen battleship _Potemkin_ was lying at anchor in the harbour within sight of the esplanade which is the centre of social gayety and a parade ground for the people of Odessa. The next morning the sailors seized two colliers, private property, and transferred the coal to the bunkers of the battleship.

On the thirtieth of June the Black Sea fleet, consisting of four battleships and five torpedo boats, arrived at Odessa under command of a senior flag-officer and the _Potemkin_ went out to meet them with decks cleared for action. She first ranged alongside the battleship _George Victorius_, the crew of which met them with an ovation and immediately after rose in mutiny, overpowered their officers, disarmed them, and conducted them ashore, with the exception of Lieutenant Grigorkoff, officer of the deck, who committed suicide.

The mutineers, having full possession of the _George Victorius_, appointed a committee of twenty sailors to take charge. A quarrel ensued, and a portion of the crew, actuated partially by fear of punishment and partially by jealousy and dissatisfaction, gained the upper hand and under the leadership of the boatswain surrendered to the commander of the military district of Odessa. Several days later the crew delivered over sixty-seven of the leaders in the mutiny and renewed their oaths of allegiance to the czar. After this the commander and officers of the vessel went on board and resumed their former duties.

The crew of the transport _Prut_ also mutinied, seized their officers, killing an ensign and boatswain who resisted. But on the following day they thought better of the situation, released their officers, and requested them to take command again.

The battleship _Potemkin_, under the command of her former boatswain, attended by the torpedo boat No. 267, then started for a cruise around the Black Sea, visiting various ports, saluting them according to custom and, in two instances, requesting provisions and fuel, which were refused. At the port of Constanza, in Roumania, the authorities endeavoured to persuade the mutineers to surrender the ship, with an assurance that they should not be arrested or held subject to extradition, but after consulting together the six hundred sailors rejected the proposition and continued to sail about several days longer until their coal gave out. Finally, when they realized that it was impossible for them to obtain more fuel, or to continue afloat without it, they cruised quietly into the harbour at Constanza, Roumania, where the committee in command entered into negotiations with the government for the surrender of the ship.

It was agreed that none of the mutineers should be arrested, detained, or otherwise interfered with, but that every man aboard would be permitted to land and to go where he pleased, on condition that no arms or other property belonging to the ship should be injured or carried away, and that everything should be left exactly as it was when the mutiny broke out. It was also agreed that the sailors should be given five days to get out of the country.

This agreement was kept, and five days later the _Potemkin_ was delivered by the captain of the port of Constanza to a crew of officers and men from the Russian navy, who were sent down from Sevastopol for that purpose. Her bunkers were filled with coal and she was taken back to Sevastopol, where she was repainted and renamed. Her extraordinary experience is never alluded to in the Russian navy. It is a painful topic. Most of the mutineers left Constanza and scattered over Europe. Those who remained in Roumania have been protected, but many of the others have been captured. Some are in prison, some were shot at the time of the arrest, others were hanged under sentence of a court-martial.