text:  The site contains some of the noblest elements of beauty and grandeur; mountain plain forest waters; its position is obviously the key of Europe and Asia Minor--even of more it is the point at which the north and south meet; by the Bosphorus it commands the communication of the Black Sea and with it of all the boundless region once Scythia and now Russia and Tartary; by the Dardanelles it has the most immediate command over the Mediterranean the most important sea in the world