The sanjak of Konia ends at Khánedá the frontier of the tribe Ada Khosh of Mingrelia. The mountains are covered with box, and the gardens are planted with box-trees. We slept one night in the village of the Beg, who did every thing to treat us kindly. We saw more than seventy Mingrelian villages, each one like a town, and then returned to Konia; our companions went back to Trebisonde, but I was commanded to go with the company of the Zenberekjí-báshí of Konia to the siege of Assov. JOURNEY TO AZAK (ASSOV) 1050. We embarked with three hundred fusileers of the janissaries, and five rowing boys of my own, in ten Lezgian barks called Munkesileh. These boats are made of the large plane-trees growing on the river Júrúgh, and consist of three planks, two of which form the sides, and the third forms the bottom; the sides are lined with reed twice as thick as a man’s wrist; this lining of reed keeps them afloat in the storms of the Black Sea, and they swim like sponges; they have neither stern nor forecastle, but are equal on both sides, and are called Munkesileh. On these boats I left Konia with a good wind, passed the river Júrúgh and arrived at the harbour Sofárí on the frontier of Mingrelia. The landing-place (iskele) of Khandra has no port (limán). The landing-place Súri has an old ruined port. The landing-place Yarissa is a ruined castle where goats are now kept. The landing-place Raijeh is without a port, but has an old ruined castle. These five landing-places are all on the frontiers of Mingrelia, they are only visited in the summer time by the merchants who carry on the slave trade. The mountains are inhabited by forty or fifty thousand warlike Mingrelians. We passed the said five landing places, and came next day, at a hundred miles distance from Konia, to the great river Fáshechai (Phasus). The Fásha (Phasus) is a great river like the Danube, in some places a mile, in others but half a mile broad, and from eight to ten fathoms deep, fresh as the spring of life; it disembogues in a gulf at the north end of the Black Sea, one thousand three hundred miles from Constantinople. It rises between Mingrelia, Georgia, Thágistán, Kabartaí, and Circassia, from Mount Caucasus (Kúhal-burz), Ubúr, and Sadasha, and passes between Mingrelia and Abáza into the Black Sea. On the east side are the Mingrelian villages, on the west the Abáza; and both shores being covered with thick forests, the two people mutually steal their children of both sexes and sell them as slaves. We passed the Phasus, marching to the west, and for a whole day went along the shore of the Black Sea. _Description of the Land of the Abáza._