THE TWENTY-SEVENTH SIEGE.

Woodville Examiner, Volume XXVIII, Issue 4627, 7 May 1915, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE TWENTY-SEVENTH SIEGE.

CONSTANTINOPLE—26 TIMES BESIEGED, 8 TIMES CAPTURED.

Constantinople, to which atl eyes are now turned, is one of the fairest cities jf the world. It has been called the Queen of the East. Byron extolled its •position as incomparable; and with the Exception of Naples it is, perhaps, more •-beautifully situated than any other ,-large city in Europe. On the south and east it has the Sea of Marmora and the •*Bosphorus, which Vambery called the ' most delightful sea-road in the world; - on the north is the Golden Horn, an inlet of the Bosphorus, and generally a dbnse forest of _ masts and flags. Situated on a series of gentle hills, the “city of Constantino” is thus surround,ed by water on. all sides except the west, which is walled. Its 500 gardens and palaces, its 680 mosques, minarets and towers, rise above the sea in the ; form of a lingo amphitheatre. Most travellers have called the city itself unclean and abominable; but the situation enchants all. One speaks of a sea of impressions stirring the soul “as a balmy breeze plays gently upon a cornfield in hloom. An intoxicating aroma is wafted towards us. All the wonders of the Eastern world seem to float before our vision—fables and palaces of the Arabian Nights. Mr. Sidney Whitman, in his “Turkish Memories,” enthuses over Constantinople “ Seen on a summer morning,” he says, “from a window on the upper floor of the Pei-a Palace Hotel, the city presents a dazzling picture of kaleidoscopic beauty. We are several hundred feet above the level of the eea. It is early morn, and a thick grey fog conceals the waters of the Golden Horn as well_ as the land. Gradually, as if awakening from a dream, the sharp angles of prominent buildings, the tips of tall minarets, the curved outlines of stately mosques emerge through the mist between clusters qf cypresses, dotted in strav patches away to the horizon. The rays' of the rising sun strike a few windows hero and there. These glisten with fi peculiar iriclesf*cnce, as if uy electricity—peeping through the impenetrable haze still dimming the ground. Something ghost-like pervades the scene. Fancv conjures up the vain anger of Polyphemus, the deriding jeers of Ulysses.’*

THE SIGN OF THE CRESCENT. It is an oft-told tale how the capital of the Ottoman Empire was founded on a site partly that of ancient Byzantium. The commanding position made it an ohiect of strife among Persians, Gauls and Greeks. In the fourth centurv B.C. the Athenians under Demosthenes came to the assistance of the Byzantines ana repelled the siege of Philip of Macedon. Legend tells that a crescent appeared m the’ sky and revealed the presence of the invaders—hence the origin ot the crescent as the badge of Constantinople to this dav. In 330 A.D. Constantine the Great left the old capital of the Eastern Empire on the Tiber and founded - in the place of Byzantium, a new metropolis on the Bosphorus which he called Constantinople. In its time Constantinople has been besieged twentysix and captured eight times. the Turks could not look across the Bosphorus upon its domes without longing for its possession. Ihey besieged it in 13D8 and 1422, and finally it was carried in 1543 by Mohammed ll.—-the same who built at Kilid Bahr n fort which was armed with brass guns throw - inti large stone shot. Constantinople consists of three distinct parts —Stamhonl and Galata m Europe, and Scutari in Asia. In Stamhmil are nearly all the antiquities; Galata is the merchants qnartei , while among Scutari’s features is the cemetery in which he the bones of Butish soldiers who fell in the Crimea. About here, also, is the Turkish Imiversity established by Abdul Hamid at a cost of nearly £I,OOO 000. “No place in the world ’’ says Lieutenant H. C. \\ oods tin his book, “Washed by hour Seas ) “appears so large for its. estimated population of some 1,000,000 persons, nobody dares to estimate the proportion in which the inhabitants may be divided or what that exact population is. You cannot talk of Cbnstantmopolitans as of Londoners or Parisians: they are non-existent. Constantinople itself is a city of cosmopolitan communities. Both the Greeks and Armenians reckon themselves at 200,000; the Mohammedans arc more numerous, and number perhaps 350,000. The remainder are made up of Franks and diverse nations, btambonl and Scutari are the proper Ovmanli quarters; at Galata reside many Greeks and Armenians; and in Pera the lordly buildings of the winter quarter? of European Embassies loom alott. it is here, too, the principal European shops are to be seen.” Beyond Pera 13 the almost separate town of lildiz Kiosk, where the Sultan dwells.

THE DARDANELLES. The distance from the entrance of the Dardanelles to the exit of the Bosphorus is nearly 200 miles. Particulars given in Lieutenant Woods* book show that the length of the Straits is some thirtythree miles; the breadth vanes from about 1,300 yards between Chanak, on the Asiatic coast, and Kili Bahr, on the European shore, to four or five miles shortly after the entrance to the Straits from the Aegean Sea. The average width of the Straits is two or three miles. The depth in mid-channel is twenty-five to fifty-five fathoms. The Straits are bounded on the north-west hv the peninsula of Gallipoli, and the town of that name was the first to fall into the hands of the Osmanli Turks ir 1357 There is a British cemetery at Gallipoli, kepi in order by a grant from the British Got eminent. This town was occupied hy the British and Frenci as a preliminary to the Cruuean Wv - , and the British Fleet was ate bored off it during the closing scenes of the Turkish War. ’ . At San Stefano, a village in the western outskirts of Constantinople, on the shore of the Sea of Marmora, the treaty between Russia and Turkey was signed on March 3rd, 1878 while the army -was encamped in sight or Constantinople. The Turks used to say: “ When we are driven out ot Constantinople we will go to Broussa; when wo are expelled from Broussa we will to Paradise.” Broussa, in Asia Minor, is \ fifty-seven miles from Constantinople, %■ "and the booking should shortly be heavy.