Sea of Marmara

“ An enormous pile, the barracks of the Anatolian soldiery, hangs over the high bank, and, as we row abreast of it, a fresh breeze comes up from the Sea of Marmora. The prow of the caïque is turned across the stream, the sail is set, and we glide rapidly and noiselessly over the Bosphorus and into the Golden Horn, between the banks of the Frank and Moslem--Pera and Stamboul. Where on the earth shall we find a panorama more magnificent? ”

“ Its western and Arabian coast terminates at Arish. On the east are, Gaza, Acca, Bairut, Tripoli Sham, and Pias. On the north, Selfeka, Anemur, Alanieh, Antakia, and proceeding by Cape Teker and Smyrna as far as the Strait (of the Dardanelles) are the coasts of Anatolia. It terminates at the island of Boosja. From within the Strait as far as the Strait of Constantinople is a small sea (Marmora) of about seven hundred miles in circumference. On the coasts of this sea are, Kaputagh, Mikhalij, Moudania, Bay of Gemlik, Constantinople, Chekmejeh, and Gallipoli. ”

“ We lay till noon in the glassy harbour of Gallipoli, and then the breeze came slowly up the Hellespont, its advancing edge marked by a crowd of small sail keeping even pace with its wings. We soon opened into the extending sea of Marmora, and the cloudy island of the same name is at this moment on our lee. The sun is setting gorgeously over the hills of Thrace, and thankful for sea-room once more, and a good breeze, we make ourselves certain of seeing Constantinople to-morrow. ”

“ Broken stars quiver in the swift-flowing waters of the Bosphorus and, while we are still gazing at the venerable, ivy-mantled walls and towers that so long guarded the City of Constantine, we enter the Sea of Marmora—known to the ancients as the Propontis—the sea before the Pontus or the Euxine of which Herodotus says “there is not in the world any other sea so wonderful.” ”

“ Six or seven miles from Constantinople, on the European shore, stands the serai of the sultan’s eldest sister. It is a Chinese-looking structure, but exceedingly picturesque, and like everything else on the Bosphorus, quite in keeping with the scene. There is not a building on either side, from the Black Sea to Marmora, that would not be ridiculous in other countries; and yet, here, their gingerbread balconies, imitation perspectives, lattices, bird-cages, and kiosks, seem as naturally the growth of the climate as the pomegranate and the cypress. ”

“ The Bosphorus is like an enormous port: we pass close beneath the shining guns of the Ottoman men-of-war, through fleets of merchantmen from every country in the world, with sails of all colors, queerly-shaped bows, and crowds of foreign-looking men upon their decks; we meet and pass outlandish craft from the Asiatic ports of the Black Sea; beautiful little sloops belonging to the various embassies; gentlemen’s yachts shoot by like arrows from the bow, taking part in races which are witnessed from the shore by crowds of spectators ”

“ It was my first experience of a Turkish town, and perhaps I was more struck with the dilapidation and evident decay than I ought to have been. The sea-wall of the massive Venetian fortification seemed crumbling and carious; the earth-work above it was half washed away; the semicircle of houses on the Marina looked seedy and tottering; the Marina itself was in places under-cut and falling into the water ”

“ One day, about the time the Turkish ships dropped, as it were, from the sky into the harbor, when the store of powder was almost exhausted, and famine menaced the city, five galleys were reported in the offing down the Marmora. About the same time the Turkish flotilla was observed making ready for action. The hungry people crowded the wall from the Seven Towers to Point Serail. The Emperor rode thither in haste, while Mahommed betook himself to the shore of the sea. ”

“ All that day we were crossing the Sea of Marmora with the strong current and wind against us, so it was dark before we reached Constantinople, and our ship was obliged to anchor in the outer harbor till the next morning. Seraglio Point rose just before us, and on the left the seven towers were dimly visible in the starlight. We walked the deck and watched the lights glimmer and stream out over the Sea of Marmora, and listened to the incessant barking of the dogs. ”

“ While companies of fearless sea-gulls spread grey wings and white breasts over the blue waters, and dance around in every graceful form that motion can assume. It is the portion of the harbour in which the world of the East is still most clearly reflected. The reach of the Golden Horn beyond the Inner Bridge is specially devoted to the service of the Turkish navy, and there may be seen such modern things as ironclads, torpedo boats, and torpedo destroyers. The time was when the Ottoman fleet which gathered here formed an imposing display of naval strength. ”

“ The daylight brightened as we sailed on past ruined castles and obsolescent earthworks into the blue Ægean Sea, losing sight of the Turkish fleet—grey and heavy, and listlessly at anchor by the old towers of the Dardanelles. No sooner had our ship put her nose out into the open than we saw black clouds of smoke hurrying along the skyline: Greek destroyers on the look-out for any ships coming out of the Dardanelles.
There was one more evidence of war as we drew near to Tenedos, with its mediæval fortress. ”

“ Turkey in Asia is still more mountainous. The two almost parallel ranges, Taurus and Anti-Taurus, which are the basis of its mountain system, cover almost the whole of the peninsula of Asia Minor or Anatolia with their ramifications and offshoots, forming the surface into elevated plateaus, deep valleys, and enclosed plains. From the Taurus chain the Lebanon range proceeds southwards parallel to the coast of Syria, and, diminishing in elevation in Palestine, terminates on the Red Sea coast at Sinai. ”

“ It is a city worthy to be the scene of the initiation of one of the world’s great movements. The splendid seaport, on the acquisition of which Austria had set her heart, impresses every visitor with a sense of a peculiar nobility with which it is invested by its aspect, situation, and history. Stately and beautiful is the approach to it from the sea as one sails up the fifty-mile broad Gulf of Salonica ”

“ There is a Turkish saying that the Almighty assigned the sovereignty of the land to the Moslem, but that of the sea to the Giaours, or Infidels.
But among the subject races of Turkey there is one which has distinguished itself for its intrepidity on the water and the fearlessness with which it navigates the Black Sea—a sea well deserving its sinister epithet. The Lazes occupy the eastern and south-eastern shores of the Black Sea, and their sailing-boats and ships do the coasting trade between these regions and Constantinople. ”

“ Although the season was thus far advanced, the Turkish fleet had not yet begun its annual summer cruise. It is not difficult for two hostile fleets to find each other, if so disposed; but the Black Sea was roomy enough for the Russians and Turks to cruise without meeting.
The heat of the climate is by no means oppressive, tempered as it is by breezes from the two seas. ”

“ To-day the warships of the European Powers watch over the interests of their nationals in the death-struggle of an ancient Empire, many of them infants, some unthought of when Constantinople was guarding Europe from Asiatic agression, thus enabling those nations whose warships lie here to develop. Yet among the cypress groves of Seraglio Point, with the waves of the glittering Sea of Marmora lazily lapping against the tottering sea-walls, it was impossible not to let the mind wander among the misty labyrinths of ancient history, though Bulgarian guns were making history some fifty miles away. ”

“ On a fine day the view over the walls away to the Sea of Marmora is wonderfully beautiful—but this is winter, and grey clouds keep out the sunshine needed to draw out the many beauties of the scene. The road, at no time really entitled to be called so, is now a quagmire with rocks in it, yet traffic of a kind is passing—lumbering carts drawn by water-buffaloes pitch and roll in the sea of mud, and clinging to them are refugees from Thrace and Macedonia who have fled from their homes before the invader. ”

“ She had engaged her passage to Constantinople by a small Turkish mailboat which sailed between Marseilles and the Black Sea. She did this partly from desire to avoid her fellow-countrymen and the possibility of recognition or notice, but more because the voyage would give her an opportunity of learning a few words of Turkish and of becoming acquainted at least with the husk of Turkish ways. ”

“ Within its walled area the traffic of the central plateaus of Asia joined with Mesopotamian or Black Sea and Mediterranean freight, after having followed the easterly approach to Turkey through Tabriz and the southern affluents of the Aras, north of Urmiah Lake. Through this eastern avenue of penetration Asiatic peoples and products have been dumped century after century into Turkish territory.
The valley of the Euphrates, rather than that of the Tigris, is therefore the main artery of communication between north and south in eastern Turkey. ”

“ The grave, long-nosed old Turks pull at their bubble pipes and sip their little cups of sweet, black coffee; the camel trains, dusty and tinkling, come winding down the narrow streets from the Thracian wheat country and go back with oversea merchandise done up in faded carpets and boxes of Standard Oil. The wind blows from the north, and it is cold, and the Marmora gray; it blows from the south, and all at once the world is warm and sea and sky are blue—so soft, so blue, so alive with lifting radiance that one does not wonder the Turk is content with a cup of coffee and a view. ”

“ It is an Eastern city of the sea, pierced by water at its heart, giving itself to the winds from Marmora, from the Golden Horn, from the Bosporus, from the Black Sea. The snows of Asia look upon it across the blue waters of Marmora, where the Iles des Princes sleep in a flickering haze of gold. Stamboul climbs, like Rome, to the summits of seven hills, and gazes over the great harbor, crowded with a forest of masts, echoing with sounds of the sea, to Galata, and to Pera on the height. ”

“ The safety of Turkey is not in such defences, but in the fact that it is for the interest of Europe to hold her up awhile longer. If once France and England were to leave her to her fate, all these ships would not save her against Russia coming from the Black Sea—or marching an army overland and attacking Constantinople in the rear. But the Sultan would have these ships, and here they are. They have been lying idle in the Bosphorus all summer, their only use being to fire salutes every Friday when the Sultan goes to mosque. They never go to sea ”

“ Dense fogs obscure the air during the winter, by the assistance of which the Turkish vessels continually mistake the entrance of a valley called the False Bogaz for the entrance of the Bosporus, and are wrecked there perpetually. I have seen dead bodies floating about in that part of the sea, where I first became acquainted with the fact that the corpse of a woman floats upon its back, while that of a man floats upon its face. In short, at Constantinople they say that every thing that is bad comes from [18] the Black Sea: the plague, the Russians, the fogs, and the cold, all come from thence ”

“ On its left Hand is the Euxin Sea, and the Palus Mætis, whose Banks are inhabited round about by many Nations, and so many navigable Rivers have their Influx into them, that there is nothing grows in any of the Countries thereabout, fit for Man’s Use; but there is a great Conveniency of transporting it by Sea to Constantinople. ”

“ All sense of being at sea fades from you as the ship penetrates ever more deeply into the secret recesses of the mountains. This is like superb lake scenery, austere, grand, almost terrible, and yet radiant. Nature is even coquettish on this perfect morning of autumn, for in these remoter regions she has cast a swathe of the lightest and whitest possible mist, like one of those scarfs of Tunis, over the cultivated land which edges the precipices. ”

“ The concession involves the construction of about fifteen hundred miles of track through Armenia, Kurdistan, and Mesopotamia, and the vilayets of Trebizond, Sivas, Van, Diarbekir and Mossoul. The road begins at the port of Snedis, on the Mediterranean, at the mouth of the Orontes River, about sixty miles south of Alexandretta, and about thirty miles from the ancient town of Antioch. From there it runs eastward through Aleppo, Urfa, Diarbekir, Bitlis, and other populous cities to Lake Van and encircles that lake, which is the most important of all the interior bodies of water in Turkey. ”

“ The importance of closing at the earliest possible moment the gap in the blockade—the direct road from Berlin to Constantinople and Egypt and the East—is supreme, for Germany may very veil secure, if only for a time, complete control of Turkey. The effect of our sea power is gravely weakened if Germany is able to draw the supplies of men and materials she needs through the Balkan countries. ”

“ They have no Genius for Sea-Voyages, and consequently are very Raw and Unexperienc'd in the Art of Navigation, scarce venturing to Sail out of Sight of Land. I speak of the natural Turks, who Trade either into the Black Sea, or some part of the Morea, or between Constantinople and Alexandria ”

“ The purpose of these naval preparations was no secret in Constantinople. As soon as they obtained these ships, or even the one dreadnaught which was nearing completion, Turkey intended to attack Greece and take back the islands. A single modern battleship like the Sultan Osman—this was the name the Turks had given the Brazilian vessel—could easily overpower the whole Greek navy and control the Ægean Sea. As this powerful vessel would be finished and commissioned in a few months, we all expected the Greco-Turkish war to break out in the fall. ”