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62 ARMENIA AND THE NEAR EAST
its fleece being hung from the tree of the nocturnal sky and
guarded by the dragon of jealousy. Hither came the Argo
nauts on their adventurous voyage, såiling up the river Phasis
to find the Sun-king Æetes of Colchis. Here the Sun-hero
Jason met in the forest the king’s lovely daughter, Medea
the sorceress, with whose help he tamed the fire-breathing
iron oxen ; here he slew the dragon, sowed dragon-seed,
dispelled the darkness, and obtained the golden fleece.
It is a fertile green land with rich vegetation and plenty of
rain ; but the low-lying ground is marshy and inadequately
drained, unhealthy and malarial. Long ago Hippocrates
noted that it was hot and damp.
We travelled on. We, too, had a dragon of jealousy to
slay, and a golden fleece, the friendship of the people, to win ;
but we could not hope to find a sorceress waiting to help us
tame the fire-breathing oxen. The night closed in about us
as we rushed through forests and across cultivated plains, up
the broad valley of Rion and through Imeretia, famous for
its rich loveliness, its roses, and its dark-eyed daughters ; but
all these beauties were hidden by the night : we could only just
make out the contours of the mountains beneath the starry
vault. There is a side-line here to Kutais, the ancient capital
of Imeretia.
What a sight met my eyes when I pulled up the blind next
morning (June 1 5 th) ! A vast blue mountain rampart in
the north, with snowy peaks like sun-clouds hovering high
above them, as if the crust of the earth had been raised on
end during the Titans’ assault on the heavens, at the boundary
where two continents meet. The mountain giants stand there
still, guarding the gateway from Asia to disunited Europe.
Against this wall the spasmodic migrations of the human race
have broken again and again in the world’s history, and
numerous remnants of the many wandering tribes who passed
that way survive in its narrow valleys.
Crossing the Suram ridge, which divides the valley of
Rion from that of Kura, and Imeretia in the west from
Karthalinia or Karthlia in the east, we were past the highest
point on the railway. We now entered the broad, deep valley
of the Kura, shut off on the north by the imposing array of
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