Front matter
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Preface
The most picturesque of islands rising out of the deep blue waters of the Mgean — ^that is the Greek Archipelago. No such mingling of land and sea in either hemisphere, unless it be in the Inland Sea of Japan. And here to the beauty of nature is added the charm of historical and poetical association ; and of sacred memories, as we f oUow in the track of Apostles ; so that the mind as weU as the eye is full as we sail along these enchanted shores. To recall impressions so fair and yet so fleeting, is the purpose of these slight sketches It is a chapter of travel by itself, which finds its natural culmination in that wonderful city, the bride of the Bosphorus, as Venice was the bride of the Adriatic, amid whose mosques and palaces sits a figure more inscrutable than the Sphinx — that of its strange master, " the unspeakable Turk.'' Of this I have written before, but it is ten years since I first saw the minarets of Constantinople, and in that time history has been making very fast. The whole Eastern question revolves round this narrow strip of the Bosphorus — the border-line of Europe and Asia. Towards this line Christendom has advanced by forced marches in the late war, which cost Turkey half of her dominion in Europe, and set free her Christian poptilations after the oppressions of four hundred years. Bulgaria, twice desolate by the burning of her villages and the massacre of her children, is a free State ; while Servia is absolutely vi PREFACE.
independent ; as is Bonmania firom the Danube to the Carpathian Mountains. These are signs of the beginning of the end of Moslem domination in Europe. The war by which this was achieved is one of the great events of modem times. Nothing since the Crusades has had more the character of a holy war than this, in which the Russian soldiers marched day after day singing hymns, and over whose camps nightly rose the Evening Prayer. This is a story worth telling, not once, but twice, and many times, as fathers tell to their children the deeds of "the brave days of old." If it be familiar to some, it is not familiar to alL I found, when passing over the very battle-ground, that the events had already faded, so that I was glad to refresh my recollection of them. Perhaps they have grown dim and indistinct to others also, who will listen with revived interest to the thrilling story.
Nor is it in European Turkey alone that change has come. Even in Asia there is life in the midst of death ; in lands which seemed to have been forgotten by history, which were buried under the night of ages, light is breaking : some rays brighten even Asiatic gloom. To this America has contributed in no small degree by the schools and colleges, as well as churches, which she has planted in Asiatic Turkey. In this she is but paying the debt which, in common with all civilized countries, she owes to the East. It is a law of history that civilization flows and reflows from continent to continent, like the tides of the sea. It is the refluent wave from the youngest of nations whkh now touches those ancient shores.
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The end
You’ve reached the end of The Greek Islands and Turkey After the War.