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The common interest of both empires imposed on the Colchians the duty of guarding the passes of Mount Caucasus, where a wall of sixty miles is now defended by the monthly service of the musketeers of Mingrelia. But this honorable connection was soon corrupted by the avarice and ambition of the Romans.
Apparently the same prince named Plangion a little before. Gori in Georgia, on the river Kur. The journey hitherto must have been through Mingrelia, then apparently subject to the prince or king of Georgia. Probably Caloyers. Arrival of Contarini at Tauris or Ecbatana, the royal city of Uzun- Hassan, and continuation of his journey through Persia to Ispahan, where the king then resided.
FIRST, that it is not a principle which influences all men's actions, is what I have proved by the examples before cited: nor need we seek so far as the Mingrelia or Peru to find instances of such as neglect, abuse, nay, and destroy their children; or look on it only as the more than brutality of some savage and barbarous nations, when we remember that it was a familiar and uncondemned practice amongst the Greeks and Romans to expose, without pity or remorse, their innocent infants.
Georgia, indeed, is a somewhat better country than Mingrelia, but the manners of the people and their way of living is equally brutal; and such were the distresses and difficulties I encountered in travelling through both, that it would be tedious to relate them.
Named Arcercheriher in the French translation of Contarini; but which must necessarily be some corruption of Baschiserai, the residence of the khan of the Crim Tartars. Contarini, leaving Kaffa, crosses the Euxine to the city of Phasis, whence he pursues his journey through Mingrelia, Georgia, and part of Armenia, into Persia.
But this source of impure wealth must inevitably poison the national manners, obliterate the sense of honor and virtue, and almost extinguish the instincts of nature: the Christians of Georgia and Mingrelia are the most dissolute of mankind; and their children, who, in a tender age, are sold into foreign slavery, have already learned to imitate the rapine of the father and the prostitution of the mother.
Leaving Phasis, as before mentioned, on the 17th of September; and taking the road of Mingrelia, we came to Cotati, or Cutais, on the 21st of that month, extremely worn out through the consequences of our late illness, and the fatigues of the journey; and as the Greek whom I had hired never ceased to give me vexation, I here parted with him as handsomely as I could.
Bordering on Circassia are the Atkans, who inhabit the coast country between Mingrelia and Circassia, and are also wild and given to plunder. Mithridates lived in Pantikapaum. The hill at Kertsch is called to this day "Mithridates' Seat."
Returning to Mingrelia, we find it bounded on the south by the river Rion, the ancient Phasis, which flows through the country whence was introduced into Europe the Phasian bird our pheasant.
Varsi may possibly be Vardon, in the district to the northwest of Mingrelia, named Abkhas; and Caltichea may perhaps be Sulhuali, a sea port about 30 miles to the east. Phasis probably refers to some town on the river of that name, perhaps Subastei. Probably Cutais in Imeritia, on the river Riene. Perhaps Sarassan, about forty miles S. E. from Cutais.
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