Bosporus

“ A week’s cycling from the Bosporus brought us beyond the Allah Dagh mountains, among the barren, variegated hills that skirt the Angora plateau. We had already passed through Ismid, the ancient Nicomedia and capital of Diocletian; and had left behind us the heavily timbered valley of the Sakaria, upon whose banks the “Freebooter of the Bithynian hills” settled with his four hundred tents and laid the foundation of the Ottoman empire. ”

“ But they also penetrate to waters which may be termed inland, as the Bosporus, where they are known to the French-speaking part of the population as âmes damnées, it being held by the Turks that they are animated by condemned human souls. ”

“ This Bosporus is a city by the sea, on the left as one sails into the so-called Euxine Sea, twenty days journey distant from the city of Cherson, which is the limit of the Roman territory. Between these cities everything is held by the Huns. Now in ancient times the people of Bosporus were autonomous, but lately they had decided to become subject to the Emperor Justinus. Probus, however, departed [9-17] from there without accomplishing his mission, and the emperor sent Peter as general with some Huns to Lazica to fight with all their strength for Gourgenes. ”

“ The situation of Constantinople on the narrow highway of the Bosporus or Strait of St. George, which connects the Black Sea with the Mediterranean, made it mistress of the maritime commerce between Europe and Asia. Neighboring countries contributed by their very geographical relation to the power on the Bosporus. The Balkan peninsula, terminating in the classic land of Greece, and fringed with the islands of the Ægean and the Adriatic; the eastern provinces of Europe, drained by the Danube, whose mouth was hard by; Russia from the Siberian snows to the temperate climate of the Euxine ”

“ CONSTANTINOPLE, the capital of the Turkish empire, situated in 41° 0′ 16′′ N. and 28° 58′ 14′′ E. The city stands at the southern extremity of the Bosporus, upon a hilly promontory that runs out from the European or western side of the straits towards the opposite Asiatic bank, as though to stem the rush of waters from the Black Sea into the Sea of Marmora. Thus the promontory has the latter sea on the south, and the bay of the Bosporus, forming the magnificent harbour known as the Golden Horn, some 4 m. long, on the north. ”

“ From the Bosporus you can see it extending from the hilltop almost to the sea, a great property, outside the city, yet dominating it, with dense groves of trees in which wild animals were kept, with open spaces, with solitary buildings and lines of roofs, and the cupola of the mosque of the soldiers. All about it are the high walls which a coward raised up to protect him and his fear. The mosque is below the great entrance-gates on a steep hillside beyond the walls. ”

“ There would be no passing the Straits of the Bosporus which is inhabited on both Shores by a barbarous People, but for the same Reason. And though a Man was never so secure of a safe Passage, yet he might mistake his Road at the Mouth of the Bosporus, being misguided by the false Lights, which the Thracians, who inhabit the Coasts of the Black Sea, formerly used to hang out, instead of a Pharos. ’Tis therefore not only in the Power of Constantinople, to prevent any Foreigners sailing the Black Sea ”

“ Passing through the Bosporus fifteen miles, there expands before you the Euxine, or Black Sea. This inland ocean, with but one narrow outlet, receives into its bosom the Danube, the Dniester, the Dnieper, the Don and the Cuban. These streams, rolling through unmeasured leagues of Russian territory, open them to the commerce of the world. This brief sketch reveals the infinite importance of the Dardanelles and the Bosporus to Russia. This great empire, "leaning against the north pole," touches the Baltic Sea only far away amidst the ices of the North. ”

“ The Golden Horn is a narrow arm of the sea, which branches from the Bosporus (a sort of broad river which connects the Marmora and Black Seas,) and, curving around, divides the city in the middle. Galata and Pera are on one side of the Bosporus, and the Golden Horn; Stamboul (ancient Byzantium) is upon the other. On the other bank of the Bosporus is Scutari and other suburbs of Constantinople. This great city contains a million inhabitants, but so narrow are its streets, and so crowded together are its houses, that it does not cover much more than half as much ground as New York City. ”

“ Military position of the Bosporus.The territory of Panticapaeum was too extensive and too important, especially for mercantile intercourse, to be left like Olbia and Tyra to the administration of changing municipal officials and a far distant governor; therefore it was entrusted to hereditary princes—a course further recommended by the circumstance that it might not seem advisable to transfer directly to the empire the relations which this region sustained to the surrounding tribes. ”

“ It is even remarkable that the armies of Mohammed and his successors, in the flush of their new fanaticism, did not dare for a long time to attack the race of Japhet settled on the Bosporus. From their native Arabia they easily overran Egypt and Northern Africa, Syria and Palestine, Mesopotamia and Persia. But Asia Minor and Thrace remained for centuries proof against their fury, and, whenever their fleets appeared in the Bosporus, they were easily defeated by the unworthy successors of Constantine and Theodosius. ”

“ While the city was thus passing once more into the hands of the Greeks, the French and Venetian ships were coming straggling down the Bosporus, on their return from Daphnusia, which they had failed to capture. Accordingly, the army of Strategopulus and his volunteers set fire to the dwellings in the French and Venetian quarters in the city and to their villas on the European shore of the Bosporus near Galata. While the foreigners were occupied in saving their own property and their women and children from the fire, Strategopulus strengthened his position in the city. ”

“ Russia and the Bosporus.—Still another situation which in the years before the war was the cause of international jealousies was Russia's long-standing ambition to control Constantinople on the Bos ́porus. As Constantinople is the capital of the Turkish Empire, the continued existence of that state, at least on the continent of Europe, was threatened by Russia's purpose. Russia has long been in need of an ice-free port as an outlet for her commerce. Archangel (ark ́ān ́jel) in the north is ice-bound most of the year. ”

“ They equip fleets consisting of these camaræ, and being masters of the sea sometimes attack vessels of burden, or invade a territory, or even a city. Sometimes even those who occupy the Bosporus assist them, by furnishing places of shelter for their vessels, and supply them with provision and means for the disposal of their booty. When they return to their own country, not having places suitable for mooring their vessels, they put their camaræ on their shoulders, and carry them up into the forests, among which they live, and where they cultivate a poor soil. ”

“ Upon the river, and on the lake, stands a city Tanaïs, founded by the Greeks, who possess the Bosporus; but lately the King Polemon915 laid it waste on account of the refractory disposition of the inhabitants. It was the common mart both of the Asiatic and of the European nomades, and of those who navigate the lake from the Bosporus, some of whom bring slaves and hides, or any other nomadic commodity; others exchange wine for clothes, and other articles peculiar to a civilized mode of life. ”

“ There also are the palaces, kiosks, and gardens, which were occupied by the Sultans and their families until the present Sultan changed his residence to another part of the city.
"The stream of water to our left," he added as our steamer rounded Seraglio Point, "is called the Golden Horn, so named on account of its curved shape. This inlet of the Bosporus, not over one-third of a mile in width, separates the older Stamboul from old Galata and newer Pera. Over the two bridges across this inlet streams of people pass constantly. ”

“ Anyone who returns after a decade of peaceful labour, when the Old World has recovered from its wounds, to the Bosporus and the shores of the Sea of Marmora, which he knew before the war, under Turkish régime, will be astonished at the marvellous changes which will then have been wrought in that favoured corner of the earth. ”

“ They have always been looked upon as intruders in Europe, and their presence there has led to several of the most sanguinary wars of modern times. Gradually they are being pushed out from their European possessions, and the time is probably not very far distant when they will be driven back across the Bosporus, as their Moorish brethren were expelled long ago from the opposite corner of the continent by the Christian chivalry of Spain. ”

“ It is handsomely and neatly fitted up, but no man could handle it well in the turbulent currents that sweep down the Bosporus from the Black Sea, and few men could row it satisfactorily even in still water. ”

“ Trade and commerce in the Bosporus.This northern Greece remained valuable for the empire on account of its commercial relations. Though these at this epoch were doubtless less important than in earlier times,222 yet the mercantile intercourse continued very lively. In the Augustan period the tribes of the steppes brought slaves and skins,223 the merchants of civilisation articles of clothing, wine, and other luxuries to Tanais; in a still higher degree Phanagoria was the depôt for the exports of the natives, Panticapaeum for the imports of the Greeks. ”

“ The Bosporus, says he, straitning it self from the Promontory into the Measure of five Stadia, or Furlongs, widens at the Harbour plac’d below Sycæ into thirty Furlongs, and from Sycæ to the Chrysoceras it contracts it self again into five Furlongs. Nor would this Opinion any ways contradict what I have said before, if my Author had meant by the Ceras of the Byzantians, what Pliny ’tis plain did, viz. the Bosporian Promontory where Byzantium stood. But Strabo immediately subjoins, that the Ceras was a Bay which was sixty Furlongs in length ”

“ The Bosphorus is quite—there can be no manner of doubt of it—the most singularly beautiful scenery in the world. From Constantinople to the Black Sea, a distance of twenty miles, the two shores of Asia and Europe, separated by but half a mile of bright blue water, are lined by lovely villages, each with its splendid palace or two, its mosque and minarets, and its hundred small houses buried in trees, each with its small dark cemetery of cypresses and turbaned head-stones, and each with its valley stretching back into the hills, of which every summit and swell is crowned with a fairy kiosk. ”

“ Below, all aflame from the reflection of the burning sky, lies the Bosphorus, wherein the Seraglio and the suburbs of Pera and Galata, with their tiers upon tiers of houses and variegated fairy palaces, mirror themselves tranquilly. The long, winding, narrow streets climb from one hill to another, and every single hill is as green as if mother Nature had claimed her due portion of each from the inhabitants, so different from our western cities, all paved and swept clean, and nothing but hard stone from end to end. ”

“ There is a great deal of business transacted on the Bosphorus; the Turks never require a table on which to write, and they are consequently but little inconvenienced by locality, when a necessity exists for profiting by the passing hour.
And this slowly-moving bark, rather dropping down with the current, than impelled by the efforts of its two Greek rowers, and which looks so cool and so pretty with all that pile of green leaves heaped upon its stern, is one of the fruit caïques for the supply of the houses overhanging the Bosphorus. ”

“ The Sweet Waters of Asia are those of a muddy little rivulet, which flow into the sparkling Bosphorus some four miles above Constantinople. Along the side of this stream, at its junction with the Bosphorus, is a small level plain, which has been for I know not how long the resort of the Turkish women. Here they come once a week on their Sundays, to look at the hills and the Bosphorus without the interference of blinds and jalousies, and at some other human beings besides the slaves and other inmates of their own harems. ”

“ Yet the world contains nothing like Constantinople! If we could compel all our senses into one, and live by the pleasures of the eye, it were a paradise untranscended. The Bosphorus—the superb, peculiar, incomparable Bosphorus! the dream-like, fairy-built seraglio! the sights within the city so richly strange, and the valleys and streams around it so exquisitely fair! the voluptuous softness of the dark eyes haunting your every step on shore, and the spirit-like swiftness and elegance of your darting caique upon the waters! In what land is the priceless sight such a treasure? ”

“ Instead of coming to terms with Russia on a basis of the independence of the Sultan, whom even Petrograd did not wish to eject from Constantinople, and of confining ourselves to our economic interests in the Near East and to the partitioning of Asia Minor into spheres of influence while renouncing any intention of military or political interference, it was our political ambition to dominate on the Bosphorus. In Russia they began to think that the road to Constantinople and the Mediterranean lay via Berlin. ”

“ Every day the Turks expected the news that the Bulgarians had declared war and were marching on Constantinople, and they knew that such an attack would necessarily bring in Rumania and Greece. It was no diplomatic secret that Italy was waiting only for the arrival of warm weather to join the Allies. At this moment the Russian fleet was bombarding Trebizond, on the Black Sea, and was daily expected at the entrance to the Bosphorus. Meanwhile the domestic situation was deplorable; all over Turkey thousands of the populace were daily dying of starvation ”