of the Caspian Sea, including Derbend and Bakoo, but he also undertook an expedition against the Lesghis of Daghestan, and made some impression on those hardy and intractable mountaineers. While the eastern portion of the country which lies between the lofty range of the Caucasus and the mountains of Lazistan and Eastern Armenia passed, as we have seen, from the possession of Persia to that of Russia, and as again recovered by the former power, the central and western districts of that portion of the globe remained under the sway of several petty princes, who owned allegiance at different times to one or other of their powerful neighbours. The country extending from the eastern shore of the Black Sea to the borders of Persia on the one hand, and from the frontier of Turkey to the foot of the mountains of Circassia on the other, is one of the very fairest portions of the earth. It contains the famous realms of Ea and the classic Phasis, of which we early read in the voyage of
- The wonder'd Argo, which, in vent'rous peece,
- First through the Euxine seas bore all the flowr of Greece.
It was divided into several principalities, three of the most considerable of which bore respectively the names of Mingrelia, Imeretia and Georgia. These countries were inhabited by races of people whose rare beauty is proverbial over the world. Their children, who for ages have been brought in large numbers into Persia and into Turkey, have, by their intermarriages with the people of those lands, been the means of changing tribes, at first remarkable for their ugliness, into handsome and pleasing-looking people; and at the present day the Georgians and Mingrelians are to a great extent doing for the Russian
