sweep of hills and mountain ranges, in its gorgeous architecture, its atmospheric brilliance and in its vast accumulations of the costumes and customs of all Europe and Asia, presents a scene which can nowhere else be paralleled.
On the Asiatic shore, opposite Constantinople, lies Scutari, a beautiful city embowered in the foliage of the cyprus. An arm of the strait reaches around the northern portion of Constantinople, and furnishes for the city one of the finest harbors in the world. This bay, deep and broad, is called the Golden Horn. Until within a few years, no embassador of Christian powers was allowed to contaminate the Moslem city by taking up his residence in it. The little suburb of Pera, on the opposite side of the Golden Horn, was assigned to these embassadors, and the Turk, on this account, denominated it The swine's quarter.
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. St. Petersburg, during a large portion of the year, is blockaded by ice. Ninety millions of people are thus excluded from all the benefits of foreign commerce for a large portion of the year unless they can open a gateway to distant shores through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles.
America, with thousands of miles of Atlantic coast, manifests the greatest uneasiness in having the island of Cuba in the hands of a foreign power, lest, in case of war, her commerce in the Gulf should be embarrassed. But the Dardanelles are, in reality, the only gateway for the commerce of
nearly all Russia. All her great navigable rivers, without exception, flow into the Black Sea, and thence through the Bosporus, the Marmora and the Hellespont, into the Mediterranean. And yet Russia, with her ninety millions of population—three times that of the United States—can not send a boat load of corn into the Mediterranean without bowing her flag to all the Turkish forts which frown along her pathway. And in case of war with Turkey her commerce is entirely cut off. Russia is evidently unembarrassed with any very troublesome scruples of conscience in reference to reclaiming those beautiful realms, once the home of the Christian, which the Turk has so ruthlessly and bloodily invaded. In assailing the Turk, the Russian feels that he is fighting for his religion.
The tzar indignantly inquires, "What title deed can the Turk show to the city of Constantine?" None but the dripping cimeter. The annals of war can tell no sadder tale of woe than the rush of the barbaric Turk into Christian Greece. He came, a merciless robber with gory hands, plundering and burning. Fathers and mothers were butchered. Christian maidens, shrieking with terror, were dragged to the Moslem harems. Christian boys were compelled to adopt the Mohammedan faith, and then, crowded into the army, were compelled to fight the Mohammedan battles. For centuries the Christians, thus trampled beneath the heel of oppression, have suffered every conceivable indignity from their cruel oppressors. Earnestly have they appealed to their Christian brethren of Russia for protection.
It is so essential to the advancing civilization of Russia that she should possess a maritime port which may give her access to commerce, that it is not easy for us to withhold our sympathies from her in her endeavor to open a gateway to and from her vast territories through the Dardanelles. When France, England and Turkey combined to batter down Sevastopol and burn the Russian fleet, that Russia might still be
barred up in her northern wilds by Turkish forts, there was an instinct in the American heart which caused the sympathies of this country to flow in favor of Russia, notwithstanding all the eloquent pleadings of the French and English press.
The cabinet of St. James regards these encroachments of Russia with great apprehension. The view England takes of the subject may be seen in the following extracts from the Quarterly Review:
"The possession of the Dardanelles would give to Russia the means of creating and organizing an almost unlimited marine. It would enable her to prepare in the Black Sea an armament of any extent, without its being possible for any power in Europe to interrupt her proceedings, or even to watch or discover her designs. Our naval officers, of the highest authority, have declared that an effective blockade of the Dardanelles can not be maintained throughout the year. Even supposing we could maintain permanently in those seas a fleet capable of encountering that of Russia, it is obvious that, in the event of a war, it would be in the power of Russia to throw the whole weight of her disposable forces on any point in the Mediterranean, without any probability of our being able to prevent it, and that the power of thus issuing forth with an overwhelming force, at any moment, would enable her to command the Mediterranean Sea for a limited time whenever it might please her so to do. Her whole southern empire would be defended by a single impregnable fortress. The road to India would then be open to her, with all Asia at her back. The finest materials in the world for an army destined to serve in the East would be at her disposal. Our power to overawe her in Europe would be gone, and by even a demonstration against India she could augment our national expenditure by many millions annually, and render the government of that country difficult beyond all calculation."