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the Phasis a learned and polite colony,[1] which manufactured linen, built navies, and invented geographical maps. The ingenuity of the moderns has peopled, with flourishing cities and nations, the isthmus between the Euxine and the Caspian;[2] and a lively writer, observing the resemblance of climate, and, in his apprehension, of trade, has not hesitated to pronounce Colchos the Holland of antiquity.[3]
Manners of the natives But the riches of Colchos shine only through the darkness of conjecture or tradition; and its genuine history presents an uniform scene of rudeness and poverty. If one hundred and thirty languages were spoken in the market of Dioscurias,[4] they were the imperfect idioms of so many savage tribes or families, sequestered from each other in the valleys of mount Caucasus;[5] and their separation, which diminished the importance, must have multiplied the number, of their rustic capitals. In the present state of Mingrelia, a village is an assemblage of huts within a wooden fence; the fortresses are seated in the depth of forests; the princely [on the Rion] town of Cyta, or Cotatis, consists of two hundred houses, and a stone edifice appertains only to the magnificence of kings. Twelve ships from Constantinople and about sixty barks, laden with the fruits of industry, annually cast anchor on the coast; and the list of Colchian exports is much increased, since the natives had only slaves and hides to offer in exchange for the corn and salt which they purchased from the subjects of Justinian. Not a vestige can be found of the art, the knowledge, or the navigation of the ancient Colchians; few Greeks desired or dared to pursue the footsteps of the Argonauts; and even the marks of an Egyptian colony are lost on a nearer approach. The right of circumcision is practised only by the Mahometans of the Euxine; and the curled hair and swarthy complexion of Africa no longer disfigure the- ↑ Herodot. l. ii. c. 104, 105, p. 150, 151. Diodor. Sicul. l. i. p. 33, edit. Wesseling. Dionys. Perieget. 689, and Eustath. ad loc. Scholiast. ad Apollonium Argonaut. l. iv. 282-291.
- ↑ Montesquieu, Esprit des Loix, l. xxi. c. 6, L'Isthme ... couvert de villes et nations qui ne sent plus.
- ↑ Bougainville, Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions, tom. xxvi. p. 33, on the African voyage of Hanno and the commerce of antiquity.
- ↑ A Greek historian, Timosthenes, had affirmed, in eam ccc nationes dissimilibus linguis descendere; and the modest Pliny is content to add, et a postea a nostris cxxx interpretibus negotia ibi gesta (vi. 5); but the word nunc deserta covers a multitude of past fictions.
- ↑ [On the Caucasian languages, see a paper by R. N. Cust, Journal Royal Asiatic Society, xvii. (1885).]
