Russia Mistress of the Black Sea.
The times are changed, when Russia defiantly breaks through the provisions of a solemn treaty with England and France, whereby she engaged to have a fleet in the Black Sea no more forever. She is now building a Black Sea fleet, and has inaugurated it by the launch of an ironclad at Nicolaieff, a seaport of about 70,000 inhabitants, located on the Bug before it joins the estuary of the Dneiper. This has been done in open day, just as if the treaty signed at the conclusion of the Crimean war never had an existence. To be sure, it was intended to cripple Russia, to keep her out of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, and England and France willed it and would maintain it. But the hand that dictated it is no more, and these nations have fallen from their rank in Europe. Russia is drawing slowly but surely a military cordon around Turkey; her future Black-Sea fleet can capture the latter’s famous capital at the beginning of a war, and her army, having crushed Tartary and awed Persia, can, by crossing through the latter’s territory nolens volens, soon be in possession of Jerusalem and the holy places, the object of the former war. The inexorable finger of fate seems to point to the annihilation of the Turkish power, and to the restoration of the Empire of the East with a Czar—a Cæsar, a Christian monarch, enthroned in St. Sophia, and sitting again in the palace of the Constantines. The fire which occurred in Portland, Oregon, recently, surpasses in its dimensions the one at Baltimore. It is fast becoming an every-day occurrence to witness such conflagrations. Inhabitants are left homeless and without friends in the full enjoyment of prosperity. The earnings of long years of toil and pain are swept away in a moment. No security can be provided against the march of the fiend, and the question becomes, Who shall be the next victim?