Indeed, even along this remote seaboard the flowing tide of Western civilisation is surely setting eastwards again. How the conditions of human life around these lonely waters have altered within the last sixty years! Sixty years ago the first steamer drew her train of smoke and foam past these forelands and bays of still uncertain fame. The slave ships infested the harbours of the coast, and if a sail rose upon the horizon it was likely to be a slaver's sail. Armed bands still forayed into the recesses of Georgia for their loot of beautiful boys and girls, and parents who wished to preserve their daughters from the market would place them, when quite children, in one of the numerous fortified convents which crowned the summits of their native hills. Slowly the grip of law has fastened upon the peoples of Caucasia, a stern force moving with the insistence of a vice from distant Russia, from the north; while from the west, with, perhaps, less system, less coherence of methods, European commerce creeps along this Turkish shore of the sea, and extends ever further into the inland country the solvent influences of her sway. Already towards the middle of the century the Russians swept these waters with their steam cruisers, while their police boats blockaded all the coast of Circassia to guard against the import of arms. Only when the season was most tempestuous, when the cruisers had retired within their harbours and the Cossacks no longer dared to face the open sea, the captain of the slave ship would venture out upon his perilous voyage from some wooded inlet of the eastern shore. At the present time this traffic has either ceased entirely or is conducted through obscure and secret channels, where it would be difficult to trace. To Russia belongs the credit of this achievement, which has accompanied the extension of her empire down the eastern coast of the Black Sea. To Europe and to the increasing intercourse with European markets is due the growing prosperity of these towns of the Turkish seaboard, and indeed the very appearance which they present. New houses, in construction far more solid than their predecessors, are transforming the aspect of the shore; burnt bricks or stone masonry take the place of wood, and these materials are faced with a coat of concrete, painted a pure white. The window apertures are large, and at evening or morning a row of wide glass panes reflects the glow. Even the Government can show some signs of progress; carriageable roads have been constructed to the towns of the interior, from Ineboli to the inland centre of Kastamuni, from Samsun to Amasia and Sivas.