While he was directing these works, the necessary provisions for his expedition were arrived in the Caspian Sea. He was to take with him twenty-two thousand foot, nine thousand dragoons, fifteen thousand Cossacks, and three thousand seamen, who were to work the ships, and occasionally assist the soldiery in making descents on the coast. The horse were to march over land through deserts where there was frequently no water to be had, and afterwards to pass over the mountains of Caucasus, where three hundred men are sufficient to stop the progress of a whole army; but the distracted condition in which Persia then was, warranted the most hazardous enterprises.
The czar sailed about a hundred leagues to the southward of Astracan, till he came to the little town of Andrewhoff. It may appear extraordinary to hear of the name of Andrew on the coasts of the Hyrcanian Sea; but some Georgians, who were formerly a sect of Christians, had built this town, which the Persians afterwards fortified; but it fell an easy prey to the czar's arms. From thence he continued advancing by land into the province of Daghestan, and caused manifestoes to be circulated in the Turkish and Persian languages.[115] It was necessary to keep fair with the Ottoman Porte, who reckoned among its subjects, not only the Circassians and Georgians, who border upon this country, but also several powerful vassals, who had of late put themselves under the protection of the grand seignior.
Among others there was one very powerful, named Mahmoud d'Utmich, who took the title of sultan, and had the courage to attack the czar's troops, by which he was totally defeated, and the story says, that his whole country was made a bonfire on the occasion.
Sept. 14, 1722.] In a short time afterwards Peter arrived at the city of Derbent, by the Persians and Turks called Demir Capi, that is, the Iron Gate, and so named from having formerly had an iron gate at the south entrance. The city is long and narrow, its upper part joins to a rocky branch of Mount Caucasus, and the walls of the lower part are washed by the sea, which in violent storms make a breach over them. These walls might pass for one of the wonders of antiquity, being forty feet in height, and six in breadth, defended with square towers at the distance of every fifty feet. The whole work seems one uniform piece, and is built of a sort of brown free-stone mixed with pounded shells, which served as mortar, so that the whole forms a mass harder than marble. The city lies open from the sea, but part of it next the land appears impregnable. There are still some ruins of an old wall like that of China, which must have been built in the earliest times of antiquity, and stretched from the borders of the Caspian Sea to the Pontus Euxinus; and this was probably a rampart raised by the ancient kings of Persia against those swarms of barbarians which dwelt between those two seas.