Note 169 — Chapter XIII · THE SOUTHERN COAST, AS FAR AS ALOUCHTA.

The village of Kutchuk Koi, four versts from Kíkineis, was buried in February, 1786. The following is the account of this catastrophe from Professor Pallas’s work, written shortly after the event:—“On the 10th of February, 1786, the surface of the earth about the deep glens before mentioned, and in another still further to the eastward, began to burst, and to exhibit rocks or clefts; so that, on the same day, the brook which had hitherto turned two small mills, constructed by the native Tatars, entirely disappeared. Two days afterwards, the soil having become entirely disengaged, and the frightened inhabitants of the adjacent village having removed their cattle, carried off their effects, and abandoned their habitations, the whole tract between the hollows above described, from the lofty bank of rocks by the sea-shore, fell in about midnight with a dreadful noise; and this sinking continued till the 28th of February, so as to occasion a terrific abyss from ten to twenty fathoms deep, in which only a large parallel ridge of hard rock and two smaller crests remained projecting at the bottom. The ground thus fallen extends about a mile and a half in length, and six hundred yards in breadth. In proportion as one part of the steep declivity was detached from the rock, the whole mass pressed downwards, and the strand was removed further into the sea to a distance of from one hundred to two hundred yards.”—Pallas’s Travels, vol. ii. p. 142.