From the Hellespont to Constantinople is a sail of forty miles, along a coast steep and rugged, destitute of any harbor or even a beach where a boat might land. Nor is there a more beautiful sight than that which is presented on approaching the Turkish capital from this direction, especially of an early morning. Against the dawn in the East are silhouetted the minarets and domes and the palace roofs of the city; then, as the light increases, the white buildings are distinguished more clearly through a purple mist that rises from the waters, until the ship enters the Bosphorus, gliding past the shipping and the boat traffic along the shore of the harbor. The beauties of the Bosphorus have been described in every book of travel that has ever included this section of the world in its descriptions: it is undoubtedly the most beautiful waterway that may be found in any country.

Emerging into the Black Sea from the Bosphorus, one strikes the Bulgarian coast not far above that neck of land on which Constantinople is built. Along this stretch of coast up to the mouth of the Danube there are two harbors, Varna and Burgas. Each is terminus of a branch railroad leading off from the Nish-Sofia-Constantinople line. Behind Burgas lie the level tracts of Eastern Rumelia, or Thrace, as that part of the country is still called. But Varna is above the point where the Balkan Range strikes the coast, all of which is steep and rocky.

Above Varna begins the Delta of the Danube, up which steamers and heavily laden barges sail continuously, but here also begins the neutral territory of Rumania, the Dobruja, the richest section of the Danube basin, which was ceded to Rumania by Bulgaria after the Second Balkan War.[Back to Contents]

CHAPTER XLV

THE CAUCASUS—THE BARRED DOOR

We now come to that section of the eastern theatre of the war which received the least extended notice in printed reports—the barred doorway between Europe and Asia,—the Caucasus. Not because the fighting there was less furious, but because the region was less accessible to war correspondents. The struggle was in fact quite as bloody and even more savage and barbarous here than elsewhere, for on this front Russ meets Turk, Christian meets Moslem, and where they grapple the veneer of chivalry blisters off.

Here again, as in Galicia, we come to a natural frontier, not only between two races, but between two continents. For here, crossing the isthmus between the Black Sea and the Caspian, stretches a mountain range over seven hundred miles in length, rising abruptly out of the plains on either side. These are the Caucasus Mountains, forming the boundary between Europe and Asia.

The higher and central part of the range (which averages only from sixty to seventy miles in width) is formed of parallel ridges, not separated by deep and wide valleys, but remarkably connected by elevated plateaus, which are traversed by narrow fissures of extreme depth. The highest peaks are in the most central chain; Mt. Elburz, attaining an elevation of 18,000 feet above the sea, while Mt. Kasbeck reaches a height of more than 16,000 feet, and several other peaks rise above the line of perpetual snow. The outlying spurs and foothills of this chain of lofty mountains are of less extent and importance than those of almost any other mountain range of similar magnitude, subsiding, as they do, until they are only 200 feet high along the shores of the Black Sea. Some parts are almost entirely bare, but other parts are densely wooded and the secondary ranges near the Black Sea are covered by magnificent forests of oak, beech, ash, maple, and walnut.

This range is an almost impassable wall across the narrow isthmus which joins Europe and Asia, and the Gorge of Dariel is the gateway in this wall through which have come almost all the migrating races that have peopled the continent of Europe. As is well known, the white peoples of Europe have been classified as the Caucasian race, because they were all supposed to have passed through this gateway originally. Apparently each of these oncoming waves of barbaric humanity, bursting through the great gateway, must have left behind some few remnants of their volume, for nowhere in the world, in so limited an area, is there such a diversity and mixture of peoples. In the words of one writer, who speaks with authority on this region, the Caucasus is "an ethnological museum where the invaders of Europe, as they traveled westward to be manufactured into nations, left behind samples of themselves in their raw condition."

Here may be found the Georgians, who so long championed the Cross against the Crescent, the wild Lesghians from the highlands of Daghestan; the Circassians, famed for the beauty of their women; Suanetians, Ossets, Abkhasians, Mingrelians, not to enumerate dozens of other tribes and races, each speaking its own tongue. It is said that over a hundred languages are spoken throughout this region; seventy in the city of Tiflis alone.