the Sweet Waters of Europe. When the road was completed, the planks thoroughly greased, a host of men hauled eighty galleys over it during the night. According to the Byzantine chronicler, Ducas, every galley had a pilot at her prow, another on her poop, with his hand on the tiller; so, with drums beating time to the sailors’ songs the whole fleet passed along as though it were carried by a stream of water, sailing, as it were, over the land. The next morning these ships were riding at anchor in the upper, shallower part of the harbour, beyond reach of the larger Genoese and Venetian vessels.
Thus the fleet of Mohammed the Conqueror in 1453, while the Turkish fleet of to-day was lying idle, though hundreds of thousands of sons of Ottoman were struggling to retain a fragment of Turkey’s European possessions.
There were few signs to show that Turkey was engaged in a struggle for life as I passed down the Bosphorus; here and there were camps, red-brown canvas tents, and over some buildings by the shore the red crescent on a white ground spoke of much-needed comfort for the sick and wounded. It was not till Stamboul and Scutari hove in sight that I saw anything unusual, but what I saw was remarkably so—the massive hulls of foreign warships. Nearer to Scutari lay a large French cruiser, black against the uncertain light of a rainy day. Scutari and Kadi Kevi, the ancient Chalcedon, as Byzas, the founder of Byzantium, called it, because the inhabitants of that place must have been blind, or they would have chosen the tongue of land opposite, on the glorious harbour, on which to build their city. Scutari, where Florence Nightingale’s hospital still stands. English ladies are following in that noble woman’s steps here, in Constantinople, in this day of affliction for the Turkish Empire—and are doing so with the bravery and devotion of women of our race.
Indeed a sign of evil days when foreign warships are anchored in the Golden Horn, but the interests of many nations are affected, and the future, not only for the Balkan countries, but also for all Europe, is big with possibilities.
Grey clouds hung over the Golden Horn as I approached it, the domes of mosques and their attendant minarets stood out darkly against a sullen sky, and the ancient cypress grove that breaks the outlines of the buildings on Seraglio Point seemed like those who mourn over some great catastrophe. Here, on this tongue of land—Seraglio Point—began the history of this troubled city, this Castle of Cæsar, throne of the Osmanli, which has seen more glory and more gloom, known more high delights and abject terrors than perhaps even eternal Rome. While heavy drops of rain fall from a leaden sky on to the steel decks of those grim foreign men-of-war, or splash on the slow-swinging waters of the Golden Horn, it is difficult to conjure up the scenes of former glories witnessed here by the sun on his daily passage from the east.
The Oracle in Poseidon’s sacred grove had whispered to Byzas the seafarer: “Go forth to the Country of the Blind and build you a city opposite their own—you shall prosper.” Silently the ship that carried Byzas and his fortunes stood out to sea as Aurora touched the high peaks of the Peloponese with rosy finger-tips, and called forth colours, carmine and gold, from the unruffled surface of the pearly Ægean Sea. Bearing ever to the north, Byzas and his fellows asked of those they met, “Is this the City of the Blind,” and receiving no answer, held on their way. He may have been tempted to land on one or other of the Prince’s islands, floating on the bosom of the blue Sea of Marmora, but the spirit within urged him further into the unknown.
Perhaps it was twilight when he saw a large city looming on the eastern shore of the narrowing waterway, the city he called Chalcedon, for opposite to it he found that entrance to the spacious harbour which is known the world over as the “Golden Horn.” Here Byzas, fulfilling the Oracle’s prediction, laid the foundations of ancient Byzantium, and the City grew and prospered. Behind the walls a busy populace increased the wealth and importance of the place, and others came here from afar in search of riches. So ancient Byzantium became the mart for those who traded from the west along the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea, through the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus away to Trebizond, on the Black Sea, where the old Greek tongue yet lingers in its purest form; the Crimea opening out cold, inhospitable Russia, even distant Persia exchanged its wares for the products of the city which Byzas had founded.
Byzant also assumed great strategical importance, as many of those who came in search of wealth came armed and minded to acquire what they wanted by the sword. Chroseos, King of the Persians, emerges from the mists of history, and appears for a brief space of time before the walls, with hordes of warriors, trained to ride, to shoot, to speak the truth; Spartans and Athenians tried the strength of this bulwark of Europe, and Alcibiades besieged it. In 370 B.C. the Athenians, urged on by Demosthenes, helped to defend the city against Philip of Macedonia, and forced him to abandon his intent. It is said that during this siege the Macedonians, under cover of a dark night, were on the point of carrying the town by assault, when a light appeared in the heavens to reveal their danger to the inhabitants. Rome gained possession of the city before the Christian era, and Constantine the Great, the man of genius, made this his capital in A.D. 330, giving to the city its present name, or rather one of its names, for the Turks call it Stamboul, or Istamboul, probably derived from the Greek εἱς τἡν πὁλιν, and to the Slavs it is known as Tsarigrad, the Castle of Cæsar.
Here in the heart of the Eastern Empire history, strong, full-blooded, speaks to us from ancient monuments and battered walls. Churches arose to mark the religious life of a strongly imaginative people, ruins of palaces still tell of a line of rulers, emperors, sultans who lived their day, worked for good or evil, and passed into the mist of things but half-remembered. Alien races found their way hither in search of booty, and dashed out their souls against the City’s strong defences. Severus, Maximus, and Constantinus tried its strength; another Persian king, Chroseos II, battled before these walls in 616, and ten years later the Avari came with the Persians on like enterprise. Towards the end of the seventh century a fierce foe, the Arabs, came up from the south, and tried in vain to force an entrance into the Castle of Constantine. They came again, and besieged the city for two years, from 716–18, but were refused a second time.
About a century and a half later Russians came down from the Black Sea, the prows of their long boats, under a cloud of sail, ploughing up the wintry waters of the Bosphorus. They also failed, but repeated the attempt twice in the tenth century, and yet once more towards the middle of the eleventh, only to return northward, baffled and broken.
The city fell for the first time before a host of Western Christians during the Latin Crusades under the leadership of Dandolo, Doge of Venice, in 1203–4. These Christians pillaged the Imperial City, and set up a line of Counts of Flanders as Emperors of the East. After some fifty years the Latins were driven forth, leaving Constantinople in a state of indescribable misery and desolation; Greek Emperors returned, but failed to restore the power of the Eastern Empire, which was sorely tried by the insistent sons of Othman. The last Greek Emperors reigned but two short centuries after the retreat of the Latins; then came Mohammed the Conqueror, and Constantinople passed into the hands of the Turk. It was during the Feast of Pentecost, on May 29th of 1453, that Constantinople fell before the sword of Othman. At this present season the Turks were keeping the Feast of Bairam, their Pentecost. Again, the superstitious point out another coincidence; both 1453 and 1912 make up the unlucky number thirteen.
Before Constantinople fell in 1453 the Eastern Empire had been shorn of all its possessions by the invading Turk, and from Adrianople, his European capital, he had organized the siege of the City. To-day all that the Turk may call his own of the European territory acquired by the sword is the point of land between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmora, on the north and south respectively, the Bosphorus on the east, and to westward the lines of Chatalja. Young nations long oppressed have risen against the power of the Porte; Greece, the first country to free itself, has marched to Saloniki, adding victory on victory; Montenegrins, the first to enter on this war, have come down from their mountains, and have taken possession of Turkish territory on the Adriatic Sea; Servia poured her warlike sons over the passes into Macedonia, and wrenched