CHAPTER II.THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE BALKAN PENINSULA

THE BALKAN PENINSULA, OR, if I am permitted to coin a useful word, Balkania, is the easternmost of the three European peninsulas belonging to the Mediterranean area. But while the other two, Italy and Spain, are shut off from the European continent, Italy by the Alps and Spain by the Pyrenees, Balkania can boast of no such well-defined barrier. On the contrary, if, as is usually done, we accept the Danube river as the northern boundary of the peninsula, we are forced to the conclusion that Balkania, instead of being walled off from its European hinterland, is closely linked up with it, since rivers always present the easiest and most natural avenues of communication.

But this accessibility from the continent turns out, on close inspection, to be more apparent than real. The Danube is indeed a magnificent highway, but intricate mountains to the south of it, covering pretty much the whole surface of the peninsula, make interior communication so difficult that Balkania is in effect a much less accessible land than either Italy or Spain. A historical consequence of this physical peculiarity deserves to be noted at the outset. Whereas Italy and Spain, protected against invasion from Europe and enjoying more or less easy internal communications, have been urged by the forces of geography toward racial, economic, and political unification, Balkania is split into so many geographic divisions separated from one another by natural barriers, that the different peoples settled on the soil have been greatly aided in an instinctive desire to maintain their separate individualities, and down to this day have successfully resisted all efforts made to bring about their political unification.

The usual practice of geographers, as already said, is to accept the Danube river as the inland boundary of Balkania, that is, the Danube from its mouth upstream to Belgrad. At Belgrad the Save, coming from the southeastern Alps, flows into the Danube, and the Save River, continued by a short air-line drawn from its upland sources to the head of the Adriatic, completes, according to common agreement, the northern line of demarcation. To the north of the lower Danube lies the fertile Rumanian plain which, from a strictly physiographical view-point, can hardly be reckoned as an integral part of Balkania. But the fact remains that this plain has been so closely tied up with the human destiny of the peninsula that for practical reasons the Balkan historian is obliged to include it in his narrative. On the other hand, the extreme northwestern section, inhabited chiefly by a Slav people, called Croats or Croatians, and embracing the districts of Croatia, Slavonia, and Istria, has politically been so closely associated with central Europe that, in spite of its physical union with Balkania, it will receive only cursory treatment in this book.

Apart from the occasional lowlands marking the course of its many rivers, Balkania may be said to be uniformly mountainous. The geographer, drawing on his next-of-kin, the geologist, is able to recount the interesting story of how the mountains came into being, but such a tale is outside the range of the historian, who is privileged to take the physical world as he finds it. Let us therefore proceed to describe the more important ranges. South of the Danube river and running parallel to its course is the Balkan range, from which the peninsula has received its name.1 The Balkan mountains fall into three nearly equal sections, of which the central section reaches the greatest elevation, boasting peaks of a height of about 8000 feet. The eastern section — often called the Lesser Balkans — is composed of rounded and richly wooded peaks which gradually decrease in height until at the shore of the Black sea they fall away to insignificant hills. It follows that the eastern section is the region of the easiest north and south communication and has the greatest number of depressions or passes. But, though the contrary view is often voiced, even the higher central and western sections of the Balkans are provided with not infrequent passes, among which the Shipka pass, the Baba Konak pass, and the Isker valley pass are the most important. By falling away rather gradually to the north, but often in very steep escarpments toward the south, the Balkan range constitutes a better military barrier against an army coming from the south than from the direction of the Danube.

South of the Balkans and separated from them by the broad valley of the Maritsa lies the Rhodope range. In its eastern section, where it touches the Aegean shore, it is composed of low foot-hills; these become steadily higher, as the range pursues its northwesterly course, until at the junction with the Balkans, in the great knot around Sofia, they reach the considerable elevation of 7500 feet. It is significant of the central location of the Sofia region that four rivers flow thence to every point of the compass: the north river, the Isker, makes for the Danube; the west river, the Nisava, reaches Serbia and the Morava basin, while the east and south rivers, the Maritsa and Struma, carry their waters into the Aegean sea. Sofia is without doubt one of the important points of peninsular control.

West of the Balkan and Rhodope ranges we come upon the very difficult highlands of Serbia and Macedonia. They constitute a region of transverse valleys which have the effect of heavily handicapping communications. The numerous short ranges with their wooded foldings reach their highest altitude in the Shar Dagh, which therefore to a considerable extent dominates the Macedonian interior. In the Shar Dagh, as in the Sofian knot, four rivers — the Ibar, the Morava, the Drin, and the Vardar — take their rise to carry their waters to such widely separated areas as the Danube, the Adriatic and the Aegean. In spite of great irregularities of direction in the Macedonian chains there is noticeable, none-the-less, a prevailing north south course which becomes particularly marked in the southern area where the Pindus range projects into northern Greece. Southward extensions of the Pindus practically overspread the whole of ancient Hellas as far as Cape Matapan, the rocky southern promontory of the Peloponnesus.

West of the Macedonian plateau are the coastal ranges of Albania and Montenegro. These are limestone chains, whose soft surfaces have been deeply cut by rushing streams and which, in the course of time, have been all but denuded of vegetation. They are continued northward in the Dinaric Alps, which, limestone formations like the mountains to the south of them, have little timber and a very sparse population. They lift their frowning battlements, marked by peaks of the most fantastic shape, along the whole length of the Adriatic coast as far north as the gulf of Triest.

To this rugged peninsula, crisscrossed with innumerable mountain barriers, the rivers afford the natural avenues of penetration. They can best be classified by the sea to which they are tributary, and if we will now take note that the Black sea washes the eastern shore of Balkania, the Aegean sea the southeastern, the Ionian sea the southwestern, and the Adriatic sea the western shore, we arrive at four groups of rivers corresponding to these four coastal waters.

Beginning with the Black sea rivers we are informed by a single glance at the map that the one overwhelmingly important stream is the Danube. It rises in southern Germany and carries off the waters of the eastern Alps, but our particular interest in it does not begin till it reaches the city of Belgrad, where it is joined by the Save. From Belgrad the Danube moves in the main due east, receiving, before at the end of a long journey it reaches the Black sea, a vast number of streams from the Carpathians to the north, and from the Serb-Macedonian highlands as well as from the Balkans to the south. Only the southern tributaries concern us here. Some twenty miles east of Belgrad, the Morava pours its waters into the Danube. The Morava is the chief stream of Serbia and therefore the main line of approach from the Danube to the Serb highlands. Proceeding eastward we come upon the Timok, which in its lower course serves as boundary between Serbia and Bulgaria; and in Bulgaria we find a whole series of Danubian tributaries maintaining a parallel direction as they flow northward from their source in the Balkan mountains. The most important among them are the Isker, which connects Sofia with the Danubian basin, the Vid, and the Yantra. By virtue of the Danube and its tributaries the whole northern region of the peninsula may be looked upon as dependent on the Black sea.

Turning to the Aegean sea to follow inland the Aegean rivers, we discover that the Balkan area which they drain is hardly less extensive than that tributary to the Black sea. The Maritsa, the Mesta, the Struma, and the Vardar are the leading arteries feeding the Aegean. The Maritsa is the great river of Bulgaria. Flowing eastward through the fertile valley between the Balkans and the Rhodope, it receives at Adrianople two other streams, the Tundja and the Arda; here, turning sharply south, it makes for the Aegean sea, gathering on its way the Ergene, which brings to it the waters of the plateau of eastern Thrace. The ‘ Mesta and the Struma drain the southern slopes of the Rhodope, while the Vardar is the great outlet of the Macedonian highlands. As the Vardar traces the most favorable line of penetration to the interior and from the interior northward to the Danube, it is an avenue of peculiar importance and Saloniki, the city near its mouth, a natural emporium.

From a hydrographic point of view the Balkan peninsula forms an elevated mass inclined...