154 THE DECLIXE AND FALL had seen the magnificence and tasted the luxury of the city of the Caesars. A marvellous tale^ and a scanty supply, excited the desires of their savage countrymen : they envied the gifts of nature which their climate denied : they coveted the works of art which they were too lazy to imitate and too indigent to purchase : the Varangian princes unfurled the banners of pira- tical adventure, and their bravest soldiers were dra%vai from the nations that dwelt in the northern isles of the oceanJ- The image of their naval armaments was revived in the last century in the fleets of the Cossacks, which issued from the Borysthenes to navigate the same seas for a similar purpose.'^ The Greek appellation oi moiwxyla, or single canoes, might be justly applied to the bottom of their vessels. It was scooped out of the long stem of a beech or willow, but the slight and narrow foundation was raised and continued on either side with planks, till it at- tained the length of sixty, and the height of about twelve, feet. These boats were built without a deck, but with two rudders and a mast ; to move with sails and oars ; and to contain from forty to seventy men, with their arms, and provisions of fresh water and salt fish. The first trial of the Russians was made with two hundred boats ; but, when the national force was exerted, they might arm against Constantinople a thousand or twelve hundred vessels. Their fleet was not much inferior to the royal navy of Agamemnon, but it was magnified in the eyes of fear to ten or fifteen times the real proportion of its strength and numbers. Had the Greek emperors been endowed with foresight to discern, and vigour to prevent, perhaps they might have sealed with a maritime force the mouth of the Borys- thenes. Their indolence abandoned the coast of Anatolia to the calamities of a piratical war, which, after an interval of six hundred years, again infested the Euxine ; but, as long as the capital was respected, the sufferings of a distant province escaped the notice both of the prince and the historian. The storm, which had swept along from the Phasis and Trebizond, at length burst on the Bosphorus of Thrace : a strait of fifteen miles, in which the rude vessels of the Russian might have been The first Stopped and destroyed by a more skilful advereary. In their A.D. 865 [8G0] ™ npo<reToipi<ra/iei'os 5e koX (rvfifiax^tov ovk oiyov uirb ruiv KaTOiKovvTuv ev toI<; Trpoo-opKTi'ois Tov 'nKcavov i-ijo-ois «e»'a)i'. Cedrenus, in Coiiipend. p. 758 [ii. 551, ed. B.]. "•* See Beauplan (Description de TUkraine, p. 54-61). His descriptions are lively, his plans accurate, and, except the circumstance of fire-arms, we may read old Russians for modern Cossacks.
