FRIEZE OF THE PARTHENON
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE BYZANTINE CAPITAL.
It is impossible to convey to the reader any adequate idea of the beauties of the Bosphorus at the point where Constantine located the capital of the Byzantine empire. The best way to approach it is by the sea, and as the traveler usually enters from the west, he sails through the Dardanelles, known in ancient times as the Hellespont, passes through the sea of Marmora and enters the Bosphorus between Constantinople, on the one side, and Skutari on the other. The Bosphorus itself is between fifteen and twenty miles long and very deep. It is the connecting link between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmora and the hills that jut into it on either side are nearly all covered with towns and villas. The water is as clear as the water of a lake, and fish may be seen at a great distance below the surface. A ride through the Bosphorus reminds one of a trip up the Hudson, although the former has the advantage in the depth of the stream, in the transparency of the water, in the height of the banks and in the irregularity of the course. In fact, the channel contains so many curves that one seems to be passing through a succession of lakes.[7]
A little more than half way between the Sea of Marmora and the Black Sea, on the north bank, is Therapia, the summer capital, to which the officials repair when the warm weather begins, and upon the same bank, about half way between Constantinople and Therapia, is Roberts College, an institution for boys, established and maintained by American philanthropy. It occupies a promontory which overlooks the Bosphorus at its narrowest point, the point at which Mohammed II crossed over from Asia, when in 1453 he succeeded in capturing Constantinople.
The Golden Horn is the name given to an arm of the Bosphorus which, leaving that strait a few miles from the Sea of Marmora, stretches northward five or six miles to receive a stream called the Sweet Waters of Europe. It may have been that the Golden Horn at one time rivaled the Bosphorus in beauty, but it does so no longer. Full of ships and boats of every description, from war vessels to canoes, and polluted by the sewage of two cities, it disappoints as much as the Bosphorus delights.