The Mellette County pioneer. [volume] (Wood, Mellette County, S.D.) 19??-1971, 1922-11-24

upon LANDING, the Illusion or n
quaint and pretty town, nesting
among hillside panels Of olive groves,
mulberry trees and vineyards, is dis
PEELED. After one look at the ditches
that do for streets, the passenger usu-
ally was willing to take the earliest
conveyance for Brusa, some fifteen
miles 70 the southeast.
This railway, built in the early nine
ties, used to be cited as an example OF
the Turks inaptitude for engineering
projects. After the line was built at
extravaganza cost the Turkish govern
ment bought locomotives not adapted
to the tracks and grades, and locked
them up for some years while the new
laid rails rusted, and the wagon road
10 Brusa was in almost impossible
condition.
If the railway ran beyond Brusa,
Mudania might enjoy greater prosper
ity, as the port Of one Of the richest
agricultural regions of Asia Minor. In
stead Panderma, to the west, as the
terminus Of the railroad to Smyrna,
completely eclipses Mudania, with only
It's short line to Brusa. Counting some
four thousand Greeks, Mudania's nor
nal population was only six thousand.
The Greeks. Of course, have departed,
but many Turks have clustered there
In recent months.
lsmid Rich In History.
Ismid, at the northeastern corner of
the Sea Of Marmora and at the base of
the peninsula that extends to the Bos-
pOrus, Is the point at which the Turk
ish na~tionalists made n Of their
heaviest troop concentrations in the
latter days of the Mudania .parley.
Ismid's once important harbor Is
now silted and Its population is barely
twenty thousand. But before COnstan-
tinople was enlarged by Constantine
the Great, Ismid, then Nicomedia, was
for a time the capital of the Roman
empire and the metropolis Of the Near
East.
Situated at the head of the Gulf of
Ismid, which forms the sharp Asiatic
end of the Sea of Marmora, and with
high ground behind it, the town lay in
the route OF the natural highway from
Syria, Persia, Mesopotamia and the
entire Near East to the BOspOrus and
Europe. In the old days camel cara
vans innumerable carrying the riches
of the East plodded around the end of
the gulf, paused to pay commercial
tribute to the strategically situated
city, and continued west along the low
coast of the gulf for the fifty miles
that separated Nicomedia from Byzan.
tium and now separate Ismid from
ConstantinOple. And when the steel
highway and iron horse that were to
connect Berlin and Bagdad came to re.
place the more picturesque but less
efficient camel and his dusty road, the
same natural path was utilized and
Ismid became q railway station.
Darius and his hosts swarmed
through the site of the present Ismid.
five hundred years before Christ, to
bridge the Bosporus and conquer
Thrace and Macedonia. Xenophon
and his ten thousand Greeks passed
through the place in their memorable
retreat from Persia to their homes.
Near there the defeated Hannibal, a
refugee from the Romans, committed
suicide; and in a villa close by Con
stantine the Great died. Force after
force Of Crusaders held the town dur
ing the Middle ages.
From NicOmedia Diocletian direct
ed his implacable campaign of perse-
cutiOn against the Christians and later
the first Christian emperor, Constan.
tine, governed from it's palaces. Bare.
ly twenty miles to the south at Nicea
the church council framed the Nicene
the west on the Ismid peninsula in 451
A. ID. was held the ecclesiastical as.
sembly from which the Armenians
bolted to form the separate Armenian
church, which, with the Roman Cath
Ollie and the Protestant churches helps
make up the four major divisions of
Christianity.
The Ismid Of today has little to re-
mind the observer of it's glorious his
tory. An old Greek a%crOpolis fanked
by Roman and Byzantine overs is
about the only remaining link with It's
opulent past. The iron-and-wood car
avans Of the Bagdad railway do not
need to pause in Ismid as did the camel
trains, and It's toll from has
dwindled away. To 1t the world no
longer looks either for creeds or the
treasures of Araby-only for a modest
supply of silk ~cocoons, tobacco, and
forest products.