Link Relations of Southwestern Asia 



299 



opment between Teuton and lyatin Eu- 

 rope which has so powerfully influenced 

 modern history, one half having and the 

 other lacking a direct route to the Hast. 

 Asia remained in the hands of the men 

 of the Northern Plain ; Ming and Man- 

 chu dynasties rose at Pekin, and the 

 Turk sits on the throne of the Eastern 

 Caesars. The descendants of Timur 

 ruled in India until the English Raj, 

 itself a product of the maritime move- 

 ment which the control by the Tatar 

 over the natural connecting link between 

 India and Europe made necessary. If 

 I were to select the one object in human 

 history which sums and t5^pifies this 

 great march of events in the long defiles 

 formed by nature creating and guiding 

 its course, it would be those shivered 

 fragments once the serpent's seat of the 

 P3^thian oracle at Delphi — the spoil of 

 the Persian when he first made Asian 

 the coast of the ^gean, won by the 

 Greek at Platsea, for seven centuries 

 the seat of prophec}', and when "Apollo 

 from his shrine can no more divine," 

 transferred by Constantine to his new 

 capital, at last the troph}^ of the Turk 



when the last of the Constantines fell in 

 the breach broken by the mace of the 

 conqueror as he rode into the Hippo- 

 drome. 



Not until the Russian railroad crossed 

 the plain east of the Caspian and ex- 

 tended itself to the Pacific had civiliza- 

 tion its full revenge and established 

 across the plain , whose folk had so long 

 closed the connection between the East 

 and the West, another sure pathway. 

 With it the history of this central re- 

 gion enters on a new chapter and be- 

 comes secondarj^ in its relations. Todaj'' 

 it only plays its part in that wider duel 

 extending over civilization between the 

 approach to the eastern centers of pop- 

 ulation of the Russian railroad and the 

 English steamer, the division of Asia 

 between Slav and Briton. But through 

 all its historj^ the same continuous 

 thread has run, which has made it the 

 connecting link between the three great 

 groups of population in the Eurasian 

 mass, and, beyond any other of earth's 

 tracts, it has had as its share and part 



Res gestse regum ducuniqvie et tristia bella. 



The Roman Empire 

 From " Europe," by EHsse Redus 



