Bistritza River near Saloniki took its name. Throughout this region
there are so many mountain ranges that it would be impossible to name
them all. Nowhere has blood been more continuously shed than here, and
nowhere in Europe is the scenery more beautiful.

Especially impressive is that section around Monastir, toward the
frontier of Albania and away from the main line of the railroad. Here,
not more than a day's walk from the city of Monastir, or Bitolia, as its
Slavic inhabitants call it, is Lake Prespa, a small sheet of
crystal-clear water in which are reflected the peaks and the rugged
crags of the surrounding mountains. Through a subterranean passage the
waters of this mountain lake pass under the range that separates it from
the much larger lake, Ochrida, the source of the bloody Drina.

The people of these mountains are Serbs, almost to Saloniki. Uskub,
whose ancient Serb name is Skoplya, was the old Serb capital, and there
the Serb ruler Doushan was crowned emperor in 1346.

For the past five hundred years these Macedonians have been used to all
the ways of guerrilla fighting. Roaming through their mountains in small
bands they have harassed the Turkish soldiers continuously.

The Bulgarian ruler Ferdinand had through many years by means of
committees and church jugglery striven to Bulgarize this population,
preparatory to the contemplated seizure of the territory which he has
now been able with the help of the Germanic powers to accomplish. But in
reality the Bulgar population in what was European Turkey was found only
eastward of the Struma in Thracia including Adrianople. Those regions
formed the ample and legitimate field of ambition for the unification of
the Bulgars.

When hostilities broke out in 1914, when Serbia was defending herself
against the Austrians, King Ferdinand of Bulgaria, the secret ally by
treaty of Austria, did everything possible to forward his designs
against the Serbs and sent armed Bulgar bands into Serb Macedonia.

Shortly below the city of Monastir in the west begins the Greek
frontier, running over eastward to Doiran, where it touches the
Bulgarian frontier. Here the railroad, coming down along the Vardar
River, emerges into the swamp lands and over them passes into the city
of Saloniki.

Here is the old territory of Philip of Macedon, the father of the
conqueror. For some forty or fifty miles these swamps stretch out from
Saloniki, overshadowed by Mt. Olympus on their sout