United States or South Korea ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
They launched upon the stream two hundred barges, which they filled with their choicest troops. Rapidly they floated down the stream, spread their sails upon the bosom of the Euxine, entered the Bosporus, and anchoring their fleet at the mouth of the Golden Horn, laid siege to the city. The Emperor Michael III. then reigned at Constantinople.
Now will we speak about those parts of Europe that lie to the south of the river Danube; and first of all, concerning Greece. To the north of this Grecian city an arm of the sea shoots up westward from the Euxine; and to the west by north the mouths of the river Danube empty themselves south-east into the Euxine.
If the reader will take a map of Greece and the AEgean, he will notice the island of Euboea lying along the classic coast like a rampart against Asia, leaving a channel between it and the continent quite a hundred and twenty miles in length, and scarcely an average of eight in width. The inlet on the north had admitted the fleet of Xerxes, and now it received the bold raiders from the Euxine.
The people of Byzantium determined to lay a toll on all ships that traded to the Euxine, in order to defray an annual tribute which they were obliged to pay to the Greeks.
From that peninsula to Trebizond, the eastern curve of the Euxine was secured by forts, by alliance, or by religion; and the possession of Lazica, the Colchos of ancient, the Mingrelia of modern, geography, soon became the object of an important war.
With an immense fleet of barges, containing sixty thousand men, he descended the Dnieper to the Euxine. Coasting along the western shore his fleet entered the mouth of the Danube. The Bulgarians fought like heroes to repel the invaders. All their efforts were in vain.
Austria, in the grandeur of her territory, was never more powerful than at this hour: extending across the whole breadth of Europe, from the valley of the Rhine to the Euxine sea, and from the Carpathian mountains to the plains of Italy.
The Rhine rising in the Rhoetian Alps from a summit altogether rocky and perpendicular, after a small winding towards the west, is lost in the Northern Ocean. The Danube issues out of the mountain Abnoba, one very high but very easy of ascent, and traversing several nations, falls by six streams into the Euxine Sea; for its seventh channel is absorbed in the Fenns.
Their northern reign ascended above the sixtieth degree of latitude over the Hyperborean regions, which fancy had peopled with monsters, or clouded with eternal darkness. To the south they followed the course of the Borysthenes, and approached with that river the neighborhood of the Euxine Sea.
Turkey had been compelled to yield the Crimea, and also to surrender the navigation of the Euxine, with the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, to her powerful rival. Galled by these concessions, which had been forced upon her by bullet and bayonet, the Ottoman Porte was ever watching to regain her lost power. Russia, instead of being satisfied with her acquisitions, was eagerly grasping at more.
Word Of The Day