The Mingrelians would appear to enjoy themselves somewhat tamely, for their pastimes were limited to that of dancing. I saw no diunkenness or rioting, owing probably to the complete absence of booths and stalls and hawkers of refreshments, who they say arc not needed. People coming from a distance bring their neighbours, and are entertained to dinner by their friends, who live at or near the place where the feast is held.
In the evening I proceeded by rail to Poti.
NOTK,— Strabo states that the city of.Ca was close to the Ph.isis, which river descended abruptly and violently into Colchis, and received in the plains, antong other rivers, the Glaucus and the Hippus. These two rivers the geographer specifies in all probability in consequence of their size, and if we arc
' A similar ad, significanl of the highest respect, is de risueiir in Rusala when an officer is ihe recipienl of a mark of favour from the Emperor in pcTson, for he acknuw. Icdco the bonoar by kiskii^ Ilia Majesty's Itft epaulelle.
ty Google
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
willijig to accept the Kvyryly, as being the ancient Phasis, wc may recognise in the Rion' on which Koutaiii is built, the ancient Glaucus, and the next large river the Tihenys-tikalys, ' horse river,' may be the Hippus.
Pliny records that iHla, a city 15,000 paces from the sea, had become ibe most celebrated among others, and that the H ippus and the Cyaneus (Tehour?} flowed from different directions into the Phasis, which also received thi Glaucus. Might not the Surium of Pliny, from which the town (Souram?) took its name, be that tributary of the Phasis now called the Tzeherety, on the banks of which is Byelagory and other stations.
Where is the Charles of Arrian? Supposing the Rion at Poti to have been that river, then we must look for the Phasis in the Pytchora-retchka, a stream that flows through the swamps of Gouria into the lake Paleostom, wbich we would at once identify with the ancient mouth of the Phasis. On such a hypothesis, however, wc should have li> search amid those same swamps, wbich there is no reason for believing have ever been thoroughly explored and surveyed, for the lake mentioned by Strabo.
' The watershed of this rivet is at the mountain called by the native* Pttsim'li, wJ flows through a country thai abounded in the ^aattrit, the Phasian bird so lunKd ■Aer the river Phasis, and introduced inio Europe, where it is known as the pheasuiL Plu>f tclU us that pheasants were Tirsl taLea to Oreccc by the Argonauts.
by Google
CHAPTER XL.
SIXTV-NINTH AND SEVENTIETH DAY.
Swampj Country — Town of Poti — The Xana variaiUii—Ttiide — Sect of the Scoptsy^Its Doctrines and Spread — Jackals at Poll — The Rock of Prometheus — Vigilance of the Police at Southoum— The Abhases — A Curious Custom — llie Genoese at Soukhoum — Appeal to the Warriors of England — Turkish Remains —Omar Pasha — Bazaars at Soukhoum — Its Climate — Roads from Soukhoum.
The railroad between Novo-Senaky and Poti traverses the most fatal swamps in Transcaucasia, where forests, the noble trees of which are perishing, Hterally spring out of quagmires and marshes flooded by the G'rma-ghely, ' deep canal,' since its course to the Rion has been impeded by the embankment constructed for the line of rails — an enterprise that cost the lives of innumerable victims, who were hurriedly buried where they succumbed at their work.
Progress in Russia is slu^ish, however sure, so that the time is far distant when these marshes will be drained and the land reclaimed, after some plan similar to that followed by the Dutch in the drainage of their meers.
Twenty years ago the site of the little town of Poti was a morass. Its salubrity and adaptation to commercial purposes has been greatly improved of late years by the construction of high and well backed wharf walls on the river's bank, and since its introduction at Soukhoum-Kaleh in 1868, the Eucalyptus globulus
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