" It is on the occasion of this enterprise, that we first became
acquainted with the maritime usages and practices of the Goths; a branch of
whom, under the name of Scandinavians, we shall afterwards find contributed
so much to the extension of geography and commerce. In order to transport
their armies across the Euxine, they employed "slight flat-bottomed barks,
framed of timber only, without the least mixture of iron, and occasionally
covered with a shelving roof on the appearance of a tempest." Their first
object of importance was the reduction of Pityus, which was provided with a
commodious harbour, and was situated at the utmost limits of the Roman
provinces. After the reduction of this place, they sailed round the eastern
extremity of the Euxine, a distance of nearly three hundred miles, to the
important commercial city of Trebizond. This they also reduced; and in it
they found an immense booty, with which they filled a great fleet of ships,
that were lying in the port at the time of the capture. Their success
encouraged and stimulated them to further enterprises against such of the
commercial cities or rich coasts of the Roman empire, as lay within their
grasp. In their second expedition, having increased their fleet by the
capture of a number of fishing vessels, near the mouths of the Borysthenes,
the Niester, and the Danube, they plundered the cities of Bithynia.
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