ancients by the denomination
of the Propontis. The navigation from the issue of the
Bosphorus to the entrance of the Hellespont is about one
hundred and twenty miles. Those who steer their westward
course through the middle of the Propontis may at once
descry the highlands of Thrace and Bithynia and never lose
sight of the lofty summit of Mount Olympus, covered with
eternal snows. They leave on the left a deep gulf, at the
bottom of which Nicomedia was seated, the imperial residence
of Diocletian, and they pass the small islands of Cyzicus
and Proconnesus before they cast anchor at Gallipoli, where
the sea which separates Asia from Europe is again contracted
to a narrow channel.

"The geographers, who with the most skilful accuracy have
surveyed the form and extent of the Hellespont, assign about
sixty miles for the winding course and about three miles for
the ordinary breadth of those celebrated straits. But the
narrowest part of the channel is found to the northward of
the old Turkish castles between the cities of Sestos and
Abydos. It was here that the adventurous Leander braved the
passage of the flood for the possession of his mistress. It
was here, likewise, in a place where the distance between
the opposite banks cannot exceed five hundred paces, that
Xerxes imposed a stupendous bridge of boats for the purpose
of transporting into Europe an hundred and seventy myriads
of barbarians. A sea contracted within such narrow limits
may seem but ill to deserve the singular epithet of _broad_,
which Homer, as well as Orpheus, has frequently bestowed on
the Hellespont. But our ideas of greatness are of a relative
nature; the traveller, and especially the poet, who sailed
along the Hellespont, who pursued the windings of the stream
and contemplated the rural scenery which appeared on every
side to terminate the prospect, insensibly lost the
remembrance of the sea, and his fancy painted those
celebrated straits with all the attributes of a mighty river
flowing with a swift current in the midst of a woody and
inland country, and at length through a wide mouth
discharging itself into the AEgean or Archipelago. Ancient
Troy, seated on an eminence at the foot of Mount Ida,
overlooked the mouth of the Hellespont, which scarcely
r