(a) Bulair was carefully reconnoitred and found to be a natural stronghold, so fortified with earthworks that there was no chance of taking it. Ten thousand Turks had been digging there for a month, and had made it impregnable. There are only two landing places near Bulair, one (a very bad one) in a swamp or salt-marsh to the east, the other in a kind of death-trap ravine to the west, both dominated by high ground in front, and one (the eastward) commanded also from the rear. Had the army, or any large part of it, landed at either beach, it would have been decimated in the act and then held up by the fortress. (b) Had the army landed to the north of Bulair on the coast of European Turkey it would have been in grave danger of destruction. Large Turkish armies could have marched upon its left and front from Adrianople and Rodosto, while, as it advanced, the large army in Gallipoli, reinforced from Asia across the Straits, could have marched from Bulair and fallen upon its right flank and rear. (c) But even had it beaten these armies, some four times its own strength, it would none the less have perished, through failure of supplies, since no European army could hope to live upon a Turkish province in the spring, and European supplies could have been brought to it only with the utmost difficulty and danger. There is no port upon that part of the Turkish coast; no shelter from the violent southerly gales, and no depth of water near the shore. In consequence, no transports of any size could approach within some miles of the coast to land either troops or stores. Even had there been depth of water for them, transports could not have discharged upon the coast because of the danger from submarines. They would have been compelled to discharge in the safe harbour of the subsidiary base at Mudros in Lemnos, and (as happened with the fighting where it was) their freight, whether men or stores, re-shipped into small ships of too light draught to be in danger from submarines, and by them conveyed to the landing places. But this system, which never quite failed at Anzac and Cape Helles, would have failed on the Xeros coast. Anzac is some forty miles from Mudros, the Xeros coast is eighty, or twice the distance. Had the army landed at Xeros, it would have been upon an unproductive enemy territory in an unsettled season of the year, from eighty to twenty hours' steam from their own safe subsidiary base. A stormy week might have cut them off at any time from all possibility of obtaining a man, a biscuit, a cartridge or even a drink of water, and this upon ground where they could with little trouble be outnumbered by armies four times their strength with sound communications. Secondly, for the reasons against attacking along the Asiatic coast: (a) The coast is commanded from the Gallipoli coast and therefore less important to those trying to second a naval attack upon the Narrows.