The Kansas City sun. (Kansas City, Mo.) 1908-1924, 1915-04-17

NO the wonderful history of the
Bosporus the great war is but
adding another chapter, for its
story runs back through the
centuries into the age of myth.
Concerning this strip of water that
separates the continents of Europe
and Asia the National Geographic So
ciety says: One writer states that
there is perhaps no other locality in
the world surrounded by so many his
torical souvenirs and adorned with SO
many varied gifts of nature; another
that God, man, nature and art have
together created and placed there the
most marvellous point of view which
the human eye al contemplate upon
earth; still another remarks that upon
this planet there is no other stream so
wonderful-that its equal can be
found, if at all, only upon some other
star.
DR.. Edwin A. Grosvenor remarks
that there is hardly a nation in the
civilized world whose blood has not
mingled with its waters; hardly a
faith, hardly a heresy. which, by the
devotion of its adherents and martyrs,
has not hallowed its banks. Associa-
tions the most dissimilar, the most
incongruous, the most distant, elbow
n another in every hamlet and vii
lage. The German emperor, William
II, in 1889, disembarked at the same
spot which tradition makes the land
snr -1n1A &c NEoA ANhn- I4n1A- Innn,
with his Argonauts in hat sublime
voyage of the fourteenth century be
fore Christ.
Deep, Narrow and Swift.
The physical features of the Bos
porus are described by the SAM
author in striking terms. He says tina
in its swift flow it is a river, and il
its depth a sea-yet many a sea is les:
profound and many a river spread:
wider and has a less rapid current
Its average depth is about SO feet. Al
no point in the channel is the depth
less than lat feet.
So sharply do its submarine banks
descend that large vessels, hugging
the land too closely, though in deer
water, often run their bowsprits ant
yards into houses on shore. The Strait
of Gibraltar, which wrests Africa from
Europe, is sixteen miles wide; ever
the Dardanelles expands from M mile
to four. But at it's widest the Bos
porus is only one and four-fifth miles
The length of the Bosporus is les:
than seventeen miles. Each AsiatiC
side indenture finds a convex bend OF
the European side; each European bay
is met by an Asiatic p~romontory.
Tradition goes back to a time when
countless ages ago, titanic forces here
rent Asia and Europe asunder; wheI
the pent-up, resistless waters of thu
Black sea tore through valleys anC
leveled mountains, in their suddel
southwark rush to the Mediterranean
The volcanic origin of the region con
firms this tradition.
Great Place for Fishing.
Seventy edible varieties of fish spor
in the waters of the Bosporus. The.
are mostly migratory. The strait il
the only line of communication be
tween the Black sea and the Mediter
ranean, their summer and winte
homes. In their migrations counties
shoals succeed one another at inter
walls of days, and never did the mel
in the crows nest of a battleship seal
the horizon more earnestly for al
enemy than the lookouts for the fish
ermen peer into the deep for signs O
a fish migration. AS soon as the aG
vanced guard arrives, a signal is giN
en-, and Immediately the Bosporus bt
comes black with fishing boats. S
regular are the fish in their habit
and so unchanging in their ways, tha
Aristotle's account of their movement