Note 244 — LETTER IV.

It is curious to find that some Goths still existed in the Crimea so late as Busbecq’s days. They occupied the south coast from Balaklava to Sudak, and the mountains north of the latter, and the Genoese officer who governed this coast in the fifteenth century, bore the title of Capitanus Gotiæ. They are mentioned by the monk Rubruquis, who was sent in 1253 by Saint Louis to the Great Khan, and also by Marco Polo, (book iv. c. 24, Yule’s edition, ii. p. 421 and note). The traveller Pallas, at the end of the last century, could find no traces of them or of their language, so that he thinks (Travels, vol. ii. p. 358), that Busbecq’s belief in their existence must have arisen from some German, Swedish, or other captives being found in the Crimea. Busbecq, however, is not the only writer who notices these Goths, and it is not difficult to understand that the tribe may have disappeared before the time of Pallas in the numerous wars which devastated the Crimea. The ruins of Mancup still remain, four leagues south of Simferopol, and nearly due east of Sebastopol. It is an almost inaccessible fortress, on a high isolated rock. Pallas describes the ruins of it in the second volume of his Travels. One of Gibbon’s numerous references to Busbecq is found in a note to Chapter xl., where he alludes to ‘these unambitious Goths.’