Mr. Bell on the growing power of Russia. 261 
fulfilled. The Turks, however, still continued the old practice of 
buying Russian subjects as slaves, and Anapa was the grand em- 
porium of this nefarious commerce, the inhabitants of which ex- 
ported all the prisoners which the ‘mountaineers took in their in- 
cursions into Georgia and the Russian territories. From this place 
Turkish officers went openly into Circassia, to encourage brigand- 
age and the tratlic in slaves ; and as Constantinople was the chief 
mart, it was the grand focus of the perpetual war for which the 
Caucasian tribes kept up with those under the Russian dominien. 
General Yermolotf, governor of Georgia, kept up an active and per- 
severing war with ‘these banditti ; but they always found a secure 
refuge beyond the Kooban, in the Turkish dominions. The cap- 
ture of Anapa, therefore, was a principal object in the campaign of 
1828, with the other forts along the coast ; and in order for ever 
to prevent all ‘Turkish intercourse with the mountain tribes of Cau- 
casus, and deprive these latter of every inducement to carry on an 
endless warfare, either mutually, or with those under Russian do- 
mination, by finding a ready market for their captives, as hereto- 
fore, at the Turkish ports and fortresses on the coast, the whole of 
that maritime tract has been retained by the Russians, and formally 
ceded to them by the peace of Adrianople. Thus a final close will 
be put to the slave trade, so long and so disgracefully carried on at 
the mouth of the Phasis and the. fortress of Anapa. 
Further, as Russia wished to establish a commercial intercourse 
between the port of Odessa and the city of Teflis in Georgia, it was 
impossible this design could be accomplished whilst the Turks held 
the fortress of Poti, at the entrance of the Phasis, and on the left 
bank, and who perpetually molested and stopped all merchant ships 
under the Russian flag. This obstacle is now remeved by the cap- 
ture and cession of that fortress, and the commercial intercourse 
between the places above mentioned, will suffer no cther impedi- 
ments but those which arise from the mountainous nature of the 
country at the heads of the Phasis and Kur. 
In the fourth place, by the cession of Poti, and the opening up 
a maritime intercourse with the intermediate regions of the sme 
and Caspian, Russia can now transport her ares from the mouths 
of the Danube, the Dneister, and the Dneiper, by sea to the mouth 
of the Phasis, and march them to the east or south as she sees fit, 
in any future war with Turkey or Persia. By means of a constant 
naval communication with the ports of Southern Russia, her armies 
can at all times be supplied with reinforcements, provisions, and 
military stores, to facilitate her warlike operations and plans of 
future conquest. By the secure possession of naval stations at the 
head of the Euxine, her power will be invulnerable to any attack 
from the undisciplined rabble that generally composes the mass of a 
Turkish or Persian army. The easy communication which, in an- 
cient times, subsisted between Constantinople and the eastern coast 
of the Euxine, was of vast advantage to the court of Byzantium. 
By its means the successors of Constanti ine were enabled to keep: 
£ 
