Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/63

 On even keel, and under a serene sky as azure as the deep, we swept into the waters of the Black Sea, the Pontus Euxinus of historic fame and evil reputation from the days of antiquity. The Greeks were wont once to call this vast inland sea by the name A-xenos^ * In-hospitable,' because of its treacherous nature and the savage character of the tribes that lived on its shores. Later they ameliorated the harsh title and euphemistically dubbed the sea Eu-xenos, ' Very Hospitable, Kindly to Strangers.' The mighty sheet of water, as we saw it, lived up to its latter name and was on its best behavior. True though in general may be Othello's simile of * the Pontic sea, whose icy current and com- pulsive force ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on,' there was nothing to suggest the image on this particular day.^ Byron's ribald lines, which found a rhyme for Euxine in a seasick jingle, fell flat at the moment for lack of aptness. Poet and dramatist alike could have sung of the sea on this particu- lar occasion in terras only of the highest encomium as we reeled off knot after knot in our Mayday course. But some of our fellow-passengers had sorrowful tales to tell of this same Euxine when Boreas lashes its wintry waves into fury.

The huge expanse of the Black Sea covers an area of more than seven hundred miles in length and almost four hundred miles in breadth at its widest part. This immense surface of nearly one hundred and seventy thousand square miles is plied by merchant vessels of all nations, though by the Treaty of Paris in 1856 no warship may sail its waters. The prohibitory provision against vessels of war and fortified stations was abro- gated by Russia in 1870 ; but she later paid dear for the violation when, after the war with Japan in 1905, a mutinous crew on one of her own ironclads seized the ship and trained the guns on Odessa and Sevastopol.

Twenty-eight hours of superb sea- weather brought our craft into the land-locked harbor of Sevastopol, where everything was in gala array for the Russian Easter Monday. The ships 1 Shakespeare, Othello, 3. 3. 463-455.

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