Recalling the days when the Danube was controlled by the robber barons who tenanted the massive castles along its banks, and trade was all but paralyzed; when Genoese and Venetian merchants sailed their small craft down its treacherous waters to collect grain from the fertile fields of Wallachia and hides and furs from the vast plains and forests of Russia; when it was but a Turkish River as the Black Sea was but a Turkish Lake, we can better appreciate its various phases of development during the past and more fully realize the vast expansion of trade which it has witnessed since its navigation was, in 1856, declared to be free to all nations. And looking forward to the time when all the numerous artificial waterways, now projected or nearing completion, shall extend the arms of the Danube to all the commercial and industrial metropolises of Central Europe, we can well believe that historic river will then, from the standpoint of international trade, be not only the most important river in Europe, but also the most important in the world. Then, indeed, will this highway of commerce be, in the words of Napoleon, the king of rivers, and then, too, will be verified the statement of Tallyrand, if it was not justified when he made it a century ago, “_Le centre de gravité de l’Europe n’est pas à Paris, ni à Berlin, mais aux Bouches du Danube_.”[27] CHAPTER II THE EUXINE AND THE BOSPHORUS IN STORY, MYTH AND LEGEND _The Pontic Sea,_ _Whose icy current and compulsive course_ _Ne’er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due course_ _To the Propontis and the Hellespont._ SHAKESPEARE “Othello.” Our entrance into the Black Sea was through the well-jettied Sulina Canal--a canal which, for a great part of its length, passes through a reed-covered lowland which is so near sea-level that, when the Danube is in flood, vast stretches of it are completely under water. The delta of the Danube, which has an area of about one thousand square miles, has been built up by the immense accumulation of mud and sand which has been brought down by the great river and its numerous affluents from the rain-drenched Balkans and Carpathians and from the far-off snow fields of the Carnic and Rhætian Alps. The rate at which the delta is encroaching on the sea may be judged from the carefully conducted investigations that have been made, which show that the amount of earth discharged at the mouths of the Danube totals several thousand cubic feet a minute. For many leagues out from land the earth-colored water of the Danube is easily distinguished from that of the Euxine. This alone enables one to realize the extent of the erosion going on in the Danube basin and the immensity of the deposit that is daily laid on this part of the bed of the Black Sea.