270 JOURNEY TO BATOUM AND POTI. 



have been still more enraptured with the town, had 

 not Bodenstedt's "enthusiastic descriptions raised my 

 expectations to somewhat too high a pitch. My journey 

 from Trebizond on the following day, favored by the 

 finest weather, lay along the steep beautifully shaped 

 shore. We steamed past Kerasoun, the celebrated 

 cherry city, from whose heights Xenophon's Ten 

 Thousand had beheld the heaving sea and cried 

 ; 'ThalattaP At Batoum our vessel reached its desti- 

 nation; then we were ferried across in a small coast- 

 ing steamer to harbourless Poti. 



Batoum has indeed only a small but thoroughly 

 safe harbour, easily accessible even in bad weather, 

 and a very fine situation, with wooded mountainous 

 country in the rear; whereas Poti lies at the mouth 

 of the Rion, the Phasis of the ancients, in a wide 

 marshy plain, and possesses no harbour at all, but 

 only a roadstead, which on account of the shallow 

 water must be avoided by vessels in windy weather. 

 Thrice has the Russian government made the costly 

 attempt to construct a break-water, to afford some 

 protection to vessels, but all these attempts have been 

 fruitless. The wicked world asserts that the first mole 

 made of wood was eaten by the bore-worm, the 

 second of cement by the sea-water, and the third built 

 of granite by the generals! Although the last assertion 

 must be regarded as a bad joke, for in reality the 

 immense cost of the stone dike arrested further pro- 

 gress, yet these repeated failures illustrate the necessity 

 felt by Russia to obtain possession of the only available 



