Important town of Pirot

Let us examine for a moment the physical characteristics of the stream- carved trench which has figured so prominently in the past history of southeastern Europe and which again today has focused upon it the eyes of the civilized world. The mouth of the Morava valley is widely open to the plains of Hungary, where the Morava River unites with the Danube some miles east of Belgrade. Southward up the river the valley narrows gradually, and the hills on either side rise to mountainous proportions; but as far up as Nish it is mature, with a flat and sometimes marshy flood- plain over which the river flows in a complicated meandering course, with occasional ox-bow lakes and braided channels. Only at two points, where the river has probably cut through ridges of exceptionally resistant rock, does the valley narrow to a more youthful form and force the better roads to make long detours over the hills. There is usually ample room for a main road on each side of the river, while the railway crosses from one bank to the other in order to connect with the larger towns located on the valley floor. The river is navigable half way up to Nish, and throughout the entire distance the flood-plain soils yield rich harvests of maize and wheat.

From Nish the route leads southeastward up a branch stream called the Nishava, to a low divide within Bulgarian territory. The valley of the Nishava is more youthful than that of the Morava and is so narrow in places that the wagon road twice abandons it for a course across the mountains. The railway is able to follow it throughout, however, and in one place the valley widens to a broad basin on the floor of which lies the important town of Pirot. Here fortresses crowned the adjacent hills to guard against a Bulgar invasion of Servia along this comparatively easy path.

After crossing the divide at Dragoman Pass, about 2,500 feet above sea-level, both road and railway descend to the broad, fertile floor of the Sofia basin. Fortunately this trends northwest-southeast and is thus in line with the general course of the Morava-Maritza trench, although it drains to the northeast through a narrow outlet gorge into the Danube. At the southeastern end of the basin the low Yakarel Pass, but little higher than the Dragoman, is crossed, and road and railway easily reach the much larger basin drained by the Maritza River and its tributaries.