THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



53 



Photograph by H. G. Dwight 

 HAULING FREIGHT FROM THE CUSTOM-HOUSE '. CONSTANTINOPLE, TURKEY 



within the limits of the Turkish Empire ! 

 Out of its past speaks military power and 

 material wealth, literature and art, phil- 

 osophy and- religion. And that land which 

 today lies desolate, with its marvelous 

 natural resources neglected, and its peo- 

 ple, who were the glory of the past, 

 repressed by injustice, cruelty, and ty- 

 ranny — that land possesses today the 

 same elements for material and spiritual 

 greatness that made it the first to develop 

 a modern civilization. 



The same broad plains that once fed 

 and clothed a population of 40,000,000 

 human beings are waiting today for the 

 plow, the seed, and the reaper. The 

 mountains still hold riches of coal and 

 iron and copper. The quarries still have 

 abundance of choice marbles. The rivers 

 are potent with power to turn the wheels 

 of industry. The natural harbors invite 

 the fleets of merchantmen and the river 

 valleys and mountain passes offer nat- 

 ural lines of communication and trans- 

 portation, as in the days when great 



caravans passed along these natural high- 

 ways, bringing the merchandise of the 

 east to the markets of the west. 



The whole land has been lying fallow 

 for centuries — a land that modern ex- 

 ploration reveals as one of the richest in 

 natural resources and as unsurpassed by 

 its geographic location for being the trade 

 center of the world. 



THE LAND AND ITS PEOPLE 



Exclusive of Arabia, which has never 

 been more than nominally under the Ot- 

 toman dominion, the Turkish Empire, as 

 at present constituted, embraces about 

 540,000 square miles of territory. Only 

 about 10,000 square miles of this are in 

 Europe. The Turkish Empire is equiva- 

 lent to the combined areas of the British 

 Isles, France, and Germany. It is larger 

 than all of the area east of the Mississippi 

 and north of the Ohio and Potomac 

 rivers. 



The territory included in our South- 

 ern Confederacy is hardly equal to the 



