anoes, might justly be applied to the bottom of
their vessels. It was scooped out of the long stem of a beech or willow,
but the slight and narrow foundation was raised and continued on either
side with planks, till it attained the length of sixty, and the height
of about twelve, feet. These boats were built without a deck, but with
two rudders and a mast; to move with sails and oars; and to contain from
forty to seventy men, with their arms, and provisions of fresh water
and salt fish. The first trial of the Russians was made with two hundred
boats; but when the national force was exerted, they might arm against
Constantinople a thousand or twelve hundred vessels. Their fleet was not
much inferior to the royal navy of Agamemnon, but it was magnified in
the eyes of fear to ten or fifteen times the real proportion of its
strength and numbers. Had the Greek emperors been endowed with foresight
to discern, and vigor to prevent, perhaps they might have sealed with a
maritime force the mouth of the Borysthenes. Their indolence abandoned
the coast of Anatolia to the calamities of a piratical war, which, after
an interval of six hundred years, again infested the Euxine; but as
long as the capital was respected, the sufferings of a distant province
escaped the notice both of the prince and the historian. The storm which
had swept along from the Phasis and Trebizond, at length burst on
the Bosphorus of Thrace; a strait of fifteen miles, in which the rude
vessels of the Russians might have been stopped and destroyed by a more
skilful adversary. In their first enterprise [59] under the princes
of Kiow, they passed without opposition, and occupied the port of
Constantinople in the absence of the emperor Michael, the son of
Theophilus. Through a crowd of perils, he landed at the palace-stairs,
and immediately repaired to a church of the Virgin Mary. [60] By the
advice of the patriarch, her garment, a precious relic, was drawn from
the sanctuary and dipped in the sea; and a seasonable tempest, which
determined the retreat of the Russians, was devoutly ascribed to the
mother of God. [61] The silence of the Greeks may inspire some doubt of
the truth, or at least of the importance, of the second attempt by Oleg,
the guardian of the sons of Ruric. [62] A strong barrier of arms and
fortifications defended the Bosphorus: they were eluded by the usual
expedient of drawing the boats over the isthmus; and this simple
operation is described in t