Vol. XXVII, No. 5 



WASHINGTON 



May, 1915 



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THE GATES TO THE BLACK SEA 



The Dardanelles, the Bosphorus, and the Sea of Marmora 

 By Harry Griswold Dwight 



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■^ O THOSE who have a passion 

 for maps the maneuvers of the 

 Alhed fleets in the Near East 

 would scarce be needed to draw attention 

 to those inmost recesses of the Mediter- 

 ranean — the Black Sea and the Sea of 

 ]\larmora. There is something alluring 

 in the very shape and position of these 

 lakes, separating as they so nearly do the 

 two most historic continents of our globe, 

 and communicating with each other and 

 with the outer seas by openings that seem 

 almost miraculous. 



And those landlocked waters, at once 

 a barrier and a highway between East 

 and West, have been from the earliest 

 times, as they happen again to be today, 

 the theater of epic events. It may be 

 that Chinese and Indian legends of the 

 Eastern seas point back to a more ancient 

 period in the story of the world ; but for 

 us of the West no legends are older than 

 those of Zeus and lo, of Phryxus and 

 Helle, of the Trojan war, of Jason and 

 the Argo, which commemorate the ear- 

 liest voyages into the Great Lakes of the 

 Levant. 



Of the two, the Marmora — the Pro- 

 pontis, if you prefer to be classical — is 

 by far the smaller. Not much more than 

 loo miles long and some 40 miles across 

 at its broadest point, it is about the same 

 size as Lake Champlain. The IMarmora 

 is a sort of vestibule between the outer 

 and inner doors of the Black Sea — the 

 Dardanelles and the Bosphorus. 



The Bosphorus is the shorter and nar- 

 rower of the two straits. It is about 20 

 miles long, and at one point of its tortu- 

 ous course the hills of Europe and Asia 

 come within 550 yards of each other (see 

 pictures, pages 438 and 439). 



The Dardanelles, or Hellespont, is a 

 little more than twice as long and nearly 

 twice as wide as the Bosphorus, varying 

 from 1,400 yards to 5 miles. Its right, 

 or European, shore is formed by the pen- 

 insula of Gallipoli, the Thracian Cherso- 

 nese of the ancients, whose steep ridge 

 overlooks the plain of Troy on the Asiatic 

 bank and the broken foot-hills of Mount 

 Ida. 



The Marmora and the Black seas are 

 no more than 20 miles apart at their near- 

 est point ; but it is astonishing what a 

 difference in aspect 20 miles may make. 

 The Marmora has much of the softness 

 of air, vividness of color, and beaut}^ of 

 scenery that we associate with the yEgean 

 and Ionian seas. Thread the narrow slit 

 of the Bosphorus, however, and you pass 

 into an entirely different world — sterner, 

 barer, rockier, colder. It is partly per- 

 haps that the Black Sea is very much 

 larger. 



If the Marmora may be compared to 

 Lake Champlain. the Black Sea is about 

 four times the size of our greatest lake. 

 Lake Superior is 412 miles long bv 167 

 wide, while the Black Sea has a length of 

 750 miles and a breadth of 385. That 

 there is something dark and unfriendly 



