ceeded in reaching, and landed about a
mile and a-half below the ship. Lord Byron has recorded that he
found the current very strong and the water cold; that some large
fish passed him in the middle of the channel, and though a little
chilled he was not fatigued, and performed the feat without much
difficulty, but not with impunity, for by the verses in which he
commemorated the exploit it appears he incurred the ague.

WRITTEN AFTER SWIMMING FROM SESTOS TO ABYDOS

If in the month of dark December
Leander who was nightly wont
(What maid will not the tale remember)
To cross thy stream, broad Hellespont,

If when the wintry tempest roar'd
He sped to Hero nothing loath,
And thus of old thy current pour'd,
Fair Venus! how I pity both.

For me, degenerate modern wretch,
Though in the genial month of May,
My dripping limbs I faintly stretch,
And think I've done a feat to-day.

But since he crossed the rapid tide,
According to the doubtful story,
To woo, and--Lord knows what beside,
And swam for love as I for glory,

'Twere hard to say who fared the best;
Sad mortals thus the gods still plague you;
He lost his labour, I my jest--
For he was drown'd, and I've the ague.

"The whole distance," says his Lordship, "from the place whence we
started to our landing on the other side, including the length we
were carried by the current, was computed by those on board the
frigate at upwards of four English miles, though the actual breadth
is barely one. The rapidity of the current is such that no boat can
row directly across, and it may in some measure be estimated from the
circumstance of the whole distance being accomplished by one of the
parties in an hour and five, and by the other (Byron) in an hour and
ten minutes. The water was extremely cold from the melting of the
mountain snows. About three weeks before, in April, we had made an
attempt; but having ridden all the way from the Troad the same
morning, and the water being of an icy chilliness, we found it
necessary to postpone the completion till the frigate anchored below
the castles, when we swam the straits as just stated, entering a
considerable way above the European, and landing below the Asiatic
fort. Chevallier says that a young Jew swam the same distance for
his mistress; and Oliver mentions it having been done by a
Neapolitan; but our consul (at the Dardanelles), Tarragona,
remembered neither of these circumstance