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THE DECLINE AND FALL
most perfect of the human race. It is in the adjacent climates of Georgia, Mingrelia, and Circassia, that nature has placed, at least to our eyes, the model of beauty in the shape of the limbs, the colour of the skin, the symmetry of the features, and the expression of the countenance.[1] According to the destination of the two sexes, the men seem formed for action, the women for love; and the perpetual supply of females from mount Caucasus has purified the blood, and improved the breed, of the southern nations of Asia. The proper district of Mingrelia, a portion only of the ancient Colchos. has long sustained an exportation of twelve thousand slaves. The number of prisoners or criminals would be inadequate to the annual demand: but the common people are in a state of servitude to their lords: the exercise of fraud or rapine is unpunished in a lawless community; and the market is continually replenished by the abuse of civil and paternal authority. Such a trade,[2] which reduces the human species to the level of cattle, may tend to encourage marriage and population; since the multitude of children enriches their sordid and inhuman parent. But this source of impure wealth must inevitably poison the national manners, obliterate the sense of honour and virtue, and almost extinguish the instincts of nature: the Christians of Georgia and Mingrelia are the most dissolute of mankind; and their children, who, in a tender age, are sold into foreign slavery, have already learnt to imitate the rapine of the father and the prostitution of the mother. Yet amidst the rudest ignorance, the untaught natives discover a singular dexterity both of mind and hand; and, although the want of union and discipline exposes them to their more powerful neighbours, a bold and intrepid spirit has animated the Colchians of every age. In the host of Xerxes, they served on foot; and their arms were a dagger or a javelin, a wooden casque, and a buckler of raw hides. But in their own country the use of cavalry has more generally prevailed; the meanest of the peasants disdain to walk; the martial nobles are possessed, perhaps, of two hundred horses; and above five
- ↑ Buffon (Hist. Nat. tom. iii. p. 433-437) collects the unanimous suffrage of naturalists and travellers. If, in the time of Herodotus, they were in truth μελάγχροες and οὐλότριχες (and he had observed them with care), this precious fact is an example of the influence of climate on a foreign colony.
- ↑ The Mingrelian ambassador arrived at Constantinople with two hundred persons; but he ate (sold) them day by day, till his retinue was diminished to a secretary and two valets (Tavernier, tom. i. p. 365). To purchase his mistress, a Mingrelian gentleman sold twelve priests and his wife to the Turks (Chardin, tom. i .p. 66).
