OCR Text |
Show v; V ,! ,('' IJ i rr j ifr -s?r ,1 .- I " ! , . ir . i View of Brusa; Aalstlo Turkey. . ;; .',. I (Prtptwl br the National Oeoxraphle Society. Waehloaton. O. C.) TO SAIL on one of the cargo boats from Constantinople that feels its way, according to the available freight from port to port along the shores of the sea of Marmora, is to obtain a charming mixture tf contrasting ages. Perhaps you will touch flint at the Princes Islands, which can be visited visit-ed by motor boat Of these, Halkl especially breathes of an untouched simplicity and charm which Is the more appreciated when one's marine glasses reveal across the way the cloudy ; city where lire Constantinople's Constanti-nople's teeming thousands. . Instead of the monster summer hotels which the proximity of an American metropolis would bring to such a spot, one finds nothing of Constantinople Con-stantinople among these pine-darkened, sea-commanding heights except hliMcppIng monasteries, where me-llevul me-llevul emperors, blinded or In chains, passed tbelr exile. Sheep bells tinkle among the olive orchards. Down the road, with bis laden donkey, comes the seller of charcoal or drinking water. In the llnv square sit silent net-mending fishermen. And that Is all, except the imiiiustery bell clanging tta angelus under the flow of a sea sunset Constantinople Con-stantinople might be oceans away. The exile ground of emperors and dogs that spells the melancholy history his-tory of these lovely Islands. Constantinople's Constan-tinople's age-old dog pest developed under the Koran's benign Injunction of kindness to dumb creatures a stumbling block . which the young Turks of 1908 sought to circumvent by offering the entire canine population popula-tion to a Christian glove manufacturer. manufactur-er. Upon his declining this dog concession conces-sion they shipped the round-up of calls by Us very ' name that Creek colonists were here, christening landmarks land-marks In honor of sacred spots (at borne, many centuries before the Turks began tiielr big westward push across Asia Minor. Along the flunks of overshadowing Olympus, Brusa scatters Itself tike some great pitch of white wild flowers, flow-ers, almost fairylike In Its aerial grace, with mosque domes resembling rich blossoms and minarets the slender i stalks, as they rise against the somber cypress ' groveii. So many mosques are tlieri that one Is tempted to ilmuglne that, llowerllke, they seated themselves at rendora whenever spring jwlnds blew. ."A walk for each day in the year, a mosiue each walk," runs the proverb of Brusa. ''' 1 ' Bilk Induitry of Brusa. , Today the sultan and sultana of Brusa are a pair of white, brown-spotted brown-spotted worms. Indeed, they produce a royal fabric, whereby, to Near Eastern East-ern peoples, the name Brusa connotes silk Just ns Kimberly connotes diamonds. dia-monds. Moreover, a Brusa n treats them os royalty to the extent of turning turn-ing his house over to them in, the feeding season ; for whenever bis attic at-tic floor becomes covered with mulberry mul-berry leaves, each wltb Its hungry worm, he carpets the rooms downstairs down-stairs with more leaves and sleeps out In the garden.' '' During the war, when the silk factories fac-tories were destroyed, the workers dispersed, dis-persed, and the very mulberry trees cut down for fuel, Brusa's ancient Industry In-dustry was, to all appearances, dead; but In 1010 returning refugees found, to their amazement that Its germ had survived. A mere handful of old women, wom-en, who bad remained In the town, had saved a few mulberry trees and had guarded, season after season, thd cycle of cocoon, moth, hatched out pariahs to barren Oxia, one of the Princes group, where the outcasts incontinently in-continently devoured one another. From the Islands It Is only a "step across the Marmora to Its Asiatic coast, and a forty mile run up the charming gulf of Ismld. A dirty hillside hill-side town, passingly enchanting under the springtide glow of fruit blossoms, turns out to be all thnt remains of Mcomedla, the one proud city of Diocletian Dio-cletian (modern Iamid). But Home's bridges have outlasted her empire, and a few years ago the Inhabitants of Greek vllluges which bad been burned by Kemalist Irregulars Irregu-lars came thronging across the stone archways built of old for the passage of Roman legions Into Asia Minor. Relics of German Ambition. Descending the gulf, one passes nt Derindje a relic of the latest bid for empire In the shape of a vast warehouse ware-house containing a million and a half square feet of Boor space, constructed by German engineers for the storage of grain arriving over the Bagdad railway. Still farther along, at Hereke, is a ! palnce which was built almost overnight over-night by Sultan Abdul Hamld for the purpose of entertaining bis friend William when, In 1910, the German emperor passed en route for bis tour In Syria and Palestine Here, In this charming, sea-bordered villa, sultan aud emperor dined and chattered for three hours, while the special train waited ; then they parted, and this ' creation for one Arabian night un tenanted before or since, passed Into the realm of yesterdays. A few honrs' run along the Asiatic coast brings one's ship within sight of Hie somnolent little port of Mudanla, where the victory-flushed Kemallsts decided not to swoop across the allied-held allied-held straits to Constantinople. Olives are taken aboard and you find that you will have time, if you choose, to visit nearby Brusa. , Snaking upward through the hills Jie narrow-gauge rails, and a wheezy toot from a toy train warns that it positively will not delay Its departure beyond half an hour r so on your account. ac-count. Vou catch It In Just twenty minutes, and are politely thanked by the engineer for not having kept him waiting longer. Gradually widening vistas, where mile on mile of olive and mulberry groves clothe the sea-skirting hills, reveal re-veal the countryside's two staples. The olive, the cocoon, the seaboard for centuries the Anatolian Greek Identified himself with this trio. The . trio remains; but the Greek, because of the post-war shift of populations, has deported. Rising abend the Asian Olympus re- eggs, and feeding worm. In time of war they had prepared for peace. The silkworm has a voracious appetite appe-tite for a creature 3 Inches long, and during Its brief life of thirty days It consumes six tiroes Its own weight In mulberry leaves. After this sumptuous repast, and having shed Its skin four times. It spins around Itself a cocoon made of a double fiber of silk, each fiber being be-ing not uncommonly 400 yards long. A fortnight later It softens the Inclosing Inclos-ing silk with Its saliva, then pushes forth as a moth. After pairing, the female moth lays 400 eggs or more ; then, her usefulness over, she dies. The cultivator, having chosen the best eggs for breeding purposes, pur-poses, Incubates them for thirty days, at a temperature well below blood heat, when a fresh crop of worms Is hatched. The cocoons chosen for the silk factory fac-tory are steamed, so as to kill the Inclosed In-closed life. Then they are steeped In basins of hot water; the gelatinous matter U thereby softened, and machines ma-chines begin to wind off the silk filament fila-ment This Is so fine as to be Invisible to the casual glance, and the attached cocoon, bobbing about In the hot water wa-ter like an animated peanut seems almost al-most alive. Scenes of War for Ages. Leaving Mudanla, your boat Is soon dipping seaward through the Dardanelles, Darda-nelles, where fortress-bearing heights gradually slope, on the Asiatic side, Into Troy's plain, and on the European Euro-pean Into tbe sparsely clad spit of Gnlllpoll. Surely, In tbe New world, magnificent magnifi-cent residences would crown such sea-commanding sea-commanding heights. Instead, only a few mean villages dot the shores of that 43-mlle passage, along which two continents face each other almost within shouting distance. Those sixteen hundred yards which separate Sestos from Abydos have been dedicated to war for over two thousand years. There the ancient Persians crossed by boat bridges to Invade Europe. There the Greeks under un-der Alexander crossed to lnvnde Asia ; and In the middle of the Fifteenth century cen-tury the Orlent'a turn came again when the Ottoman Turks passed over at the same spot, planting their banner ban-ner In Europe for the first time. It Is the ferry to conquest or disaster. dis-aster. Legends of a seven years' siege beckon from the abutting Trojan plain, while Just opposite, off Gnlllpoll. the Aegean ran blood-red with the terrible allied losses of 1915. Today some acres of wooden crosses alone mark the desolate scene of that modern Iliad. |