From a geographical standpoint the area of Serbian speech presents excessive diversity of features. National unity within its bounds is therefore apt to be sorely hampered. Dalmatia, teeming with islands and fiords, enjoys the advantage of easy access to all its districts by way of the sea. The Dinaric Alps separate it, however, from the land of the ancient kingdom of Serbia which arose on the basins of the Save and Morava. The two areas form in reality isolated compartments. A capital suitable to both cannot be located. Belgrade or Nish is appropriate enough for the valley of the Danube, Spalato or Ragusa for the coastland. Uskub is perhaps more centrally situated on the road connecting the Danube to the Adriatic. But this city also belongs to the eastern watershed of the isolating mountains. Whatever be the political destiny of this linguistic area, it is bound to be divided into two parts with outlets respectively on the Adriatic and the Danube. Between the sixth and thirteenth centuries, the Serbian invaders of the Balkan peninsula grouped themselves into a number of independent tribes. The Serbian state to which the smaller units adhered politically came into being in the thirteenth century. That it was inhabited by a prosperous people is proven by numerous works of art which are still preserved in the churches of the land. A hundred years later the kingdom of Serbia attains its widest extension. Under Stephen Dushan, the country spreads from the Black Sea to the Adriatic and from the Danube and Save valleys to the Ægean. In 1346 Dushan is crowned emperor at Uskub. He is about to march on Constantinople, but death puts an end to this project. Henceforth Serbian power is to be on the wane. The appearance of the Turks in the Balkans in the last decade of the fourteenth century marks the end of Serbian independence. In the ensuing four hundred years, Serbian lands and their inhabitants are the prey of merciless Asiatics. The devastating grip of Turkish oppression begins to be relaxed in 1815 when, under the leadership of Miloch Obrenovitch, the Serbians laid the foundation of their modern independence by forcing the Turks to grant them a partial self-government. Thence to the year 1867 political emancipation from Turkey progressed steadily.