Sultan of Sultans

At Geva, the last station on the Trans-Bosporus railway, where we left the track to follow the Angora highway, the ships of the desert are beginning to transfer their cargoes to the land steamer, instead of continuing on as in former days to the Bosporus.

The Trans-Bosporus line, in the year of our visit, was being built and operated by a German company under the direct patronage of the Sultan.

We ventured to ask some natives if they thought the Sultan had sufficient funds to consummate so gigantic a scheme, and they replied with the deepest reverence, God has given the Padishah much property and power, and certainly he must give him enough money to utilize it.

A week's cycling from the Bosporus brought us beyond the Aladag Mountains, among the barren, variegated hills that skirt the Angora plateau.

We had already passed through Izmid, the ancient Nicomedia and capital of Diocletian, and had left behind us the heavily timbered valley of the Sakarya, upon whose banks the freebooter of the Bithynian hills settled with his four hundred tents and laid the foundation of the Ottoman Empire.

The most flagrant example of Turkish formality that came to our notice was the following address on an official document to the sultan.

The arbiter, the absolute, the soul and body of the universe, the father of all sovereigns of the earth.

His Excellency, the Eagle Monarch, the cause of an ever-changing order of things, the source of all honor, the son of the Sultan of Sultans, under whose feet we are dust, whose awful shadow protects us.