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They sprang up, and looked with many strange feelings upon the broad river they had come to. Here was the Phasis emptying itself into the Sea of Pontus! Up that river was Colchis and the city of King Æetes, the end of their voyage, the place where was kept the Golden Fleece!
It, the new Truth, new deeper revealing of the Secret of this Universe, is verily of the nature of a message from on high; and must and will have itself obeyed. My last remark is on that notablest phasis of Burns's history, his visit to Edinburgh. Often it seems to me as if his demeanor there were the highest proof he gave of what a fund of worth and genuine manhood was in him.
But Æetes once was made afraid by a dream that he had: he dreamt that a ship had come up the Phasis, and then, sailing on a mist, had rammed his palace that was standing there in all its strength and beauty until it had fallen down.
The Persians, one and all, took to flight; a general sally was made by the Romans in Phasis; a rout and a carnage followed, which completely disheartened the Persian leader, and led him to give up his enterprise.
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.
By the Ochus they were conveyed to the Caspian, and across it to the mouth of the river Cyrus, which was ascended to where it approached nearest the Phasis: caravans were employed again, till the merchandize were embarked at Serapana on the Phasis, and thus brought to the Black Sea.
Phasis is a city of Mingrelia, subject to prince Bendian, whose dominions extend only about three days journey in length. The country is very mountainous, and full of forests. The inhabitants are so fierce and savage, that they might be accounted wild beasts.
That tower was a stronghold of Christianity in the third century, and it was strange to think that Crusaders and mediaeval warriors had looked out from the same tower, over the same glorious sea. Assuredly from the watch-tower of ancient Time all buildings and man's dwellings are but toys. I thought of that when I rowed across the river Phasis, and drank coffee at Poti on the site of Colchis.
Their silver palaces and golden chambers surpass our belief; but the fame of their riches is said to have excited the enterprising avarice of the Argonauts. Tradition has affirmed, with some color of reason, that Egypt planted on the Phasis a learned and polite colony, which manufactured linen, built navies, and invented geographical maps.
Lucullus very much outwent him in war being the first Roman who carried an army over Taurus, passed the Tigris, took and burnt the royal palaces of Asia in the sight of the kings, Tigranocerta, Cabira, Sinope, and Nisibis, seizing and overwhelming the northern parts as far as the Phasis, the east as far as Media, and making the South and Red Sea his own through the kings of the Arabians.
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