ea

He appears more actively employed--likewise quite in the Oriental
style--in enlarging on all sides his kingdom, which was even then not
small, though its compass is probably over-stated at 2300 miles; we find
his armies, his fleets, and his envoys busy along the Black Sea as well
as towards Armenia and towards Asia Minor. But nowhere did so free and
ample an arena present itself to him as on the eastern and northern
shores of the Black Sea, the state of which at that time we must not
omit to glance at, however difficult or in fact impossible it is to
give a really distinct idea of it. On the eastern coast of the Black
Sea--which, previously almost unknown, was first opened up to more
general knowledge by Mithradates--the region of Colchis on the
Phasis (Mingrelia and Imeretia) with the important commercial town
of Dioscurias was wrested from the native princes and converted into
a satrapy of Pontus. Of still greater moment were his enterprises in
the northern regions.(5) The wide steppes destitute of hills and
trees, which stretch to the north of the Black Sea, of the Caucasus,
and of the Caspian, are by reason of their natural conditions--more
especially from the variations of temperature fluctuating between
the climate of Stockholm and that of Madeira, and from the absolute
destitution of rain or snow which occurs not unfrequently and lasts
for a period of twenty-two months or longer--little adapted for
agriculture or for permanent settlement at all; and they always were
so, although two thousand years ago the state of the climate was
presumably somewhat less unfavourable than it is at the present
day.(6) The various tribes, whose wandering impulse led them into
these regions, submitted to this ordinance of nature and led (and still
to some extent lead) a wandering pastoral life with their herds of oxen
or still more frequently of horses, changing their places of abode and
pasture, and carrying their effects along with them in waggon-houses.
Their equipment and style of fighting were consonant to this mode of
life; the inhabitants of these steppes fought in great measure on
horseback and always in loose array, equipped with helmet and coat
of mail of leather and leather-covered shield, armed with sword,
lance, and bow--the ancestors of the modern Cossacks. The Scythians
originally settled there, who seem to have been of Mongolian race
and akin in their habits and physical appearance to the present
inhabitan