Asia from Europe, is
again contracted into a narrow channel.

[Footnote 14: Thevenot (Voyages au Levant, part i. l. i. c. 14)
contracts the measure to 125 small Greek miles. Belon (Observations,
l. ii. c. 1.) gives a good description of the Propontis, but contents
himself with the vague expression of one day and one night's sail. When
Sandy's (Travels, p. 21) talks of 150 furlongs in length, as well as
breadth we can only suppose some mistake of the press in the text of
that judicious traveller.]

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. [15] But the narrowest part of the channel is found
to the northward of the old Turkish castles between the cities of Sestus
and Abydus. It was here that the adventurous Leander braved the passage
of the flood for the possession of his mistress. [16] 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 a hundred
and seventy myriads of barbarians. [17] 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. [17a] 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. [18] Ancient Troy, [19] seated on a an eminence at the foot
of Mount Ida, overlooked the mouth of the Hellespont, which scarcely
received an accession of waters from the tribute of those immortal
rivulets the Simois and Scamander. The Grecian camp had stretched twelve
miles along the shore from the Sigaean to the Rhaetean promontory; and
the flanks of the army were guarded by the bravest chiefs who fought
under the banners of Agamemnon. The first of those promontories was
occ