Some authorities,
however, include Rumania, and others even bring in Austria's Slavic
provinces, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The most noticeable feature of this vast war-ridden region is its
mountains. Those same Carpathian Mountains, which form the natural
boundary between the land of the Magyars and the Russian plains,
take a sudden turn westward at the Rumanian frontier, then sweep
around in a great semicircle, forming a shape resembling a scythe,
the handle of which reaches up into Poland, the blade curling around
within the Balkan Peninsula. Behind the handle, and above the upper
part of the blade, stretch the broad plains of Hungary, through
which flows the great Danube, the largest river in Europe next
to the Russian Volga--a river which flowed with blood during the
Great War. Just in the middle of the back of the blade this great
river bursts through the mountain chain, swirling through the famous
Iron Gate into the great basin within the curved blade. On the south
of its farther course to the Black Sea lie the plains of northern
Bulgaria.
The curving chain of mountains below the Iron Gate is the Balkan
Range. But excepting for the plains of Thrace, lying south of the
Balkans, over toward the Black Sea and above Constantinople, the rest
of the peninsula is almost entirely one confused tangle of craggy
mountains, interspersed throughout with small, fertile valleys and
plateaus.
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