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Rh thousand are numbered in the tram of the prince of Mingrelia. The Colchian government has been always a pure and hereditary kingdom: and the authority of the sovereign is only restrained by the turbulence of his subjects. Whenever they were obedient, he could lead a numerous army into the field; but some faith is requisite to believe that the single tribe of the Suanians was composed of two hundred thousand soldiers, or that the population of Mingrelia now amounts to four millions of inhabitants.

It was the boast of the Colchians, that their ancestors had checked the victories of Sesostris; and the defeat of the Egyptian is less incredible than his successful progress as far as the foot of mount Caucasus. They sunk, without any memorable effort, under the arms of Cyrus; followed in distant wars the standard of the great king; and presented him every fifth year with one hundred boys and as many virgins, the fairest produce of the land. Yet he accepted this gift like the gold and ebony of India, the frankincense of the Arabs, or the negroes and ivory of Æthiopia; the Colchians were not subject to the dominion of a satrap, and they continued to enjoy the name as well as substance of national independence. After the fall of the Persian empire, Mithridates, king of Pontus, added Colchos to the wide circle of his dominions on the Euxine; and, when the natives presumed to request that his son might reign over them, he bound the ambitious youth in chains of gold, and delegated a servant in his place. In the pursuit of Mithridates, the Romans advanced to the banks of the Phasis, and their galleys ascended the river till they reached the camp of Pompey and his legions. But the senate, and afterwards the emperors, disdained to reduce that distant and useless conquest into the form of a province. The family of a Greek rhetorician was permitted to reign in Colchos and the