If the statements of Pliny and Strabo may be relied upon, the Hellespont must have been much narrower in former times than it is now. At Abydos—the modern Naghara—the width is said to have amounted to seven stadia, or less than a mile, anciently, whilst at the present time it is 6,500 feet. It was here Xerxes constructed his double bridge of boats. The strait is deep at that spot, and its current strong, but no wooden ship could hope to force a passage if covered by the guns in the batteries on both coasts. The Hellespont, like the Bosphorus, has two {106} currents flowing through it. In winter, when the rivers which flow into the Black Sea are frozen up, and the Sea of Marmara is no longer fed by the waters of the Bosphorus, a highly saline under-current penetrates from the Ægean Sea into the Dardanelles, whilst a feebler current of comparatively fresh water flows in a contrary direction on the surface.[29] Gallipoli, the Constantinople of the Hellespont, stands near the western extremity of the Sea of Marmara. It is the first city which the Turks captured upon the soil of Europe; but though they settled down there nearly a hundred years earlier than they did at Constantinople, they are no more in the majority here than they are in the capital. Gallipoli, like Rodosto and other towns on the Sea of Marmara, is inhabited by Mohammedans of various races, by Greeks, Armenians, and Jews, forming separate communities dwelling within the walls of the same town. The country population consists almost exclusively of Greeks, who are the proprietors and cultivators of the land; and in sight of the coasts of Asia, and within that portion of the Balkan peninsula which has been longest under the rule of the Turk, the Greek is stronger numerically than anywhere else to the north of Mount Pindus. He does not there confine himself to the coast, and, if we except a few Bulgarian villages and the larger towns, the whole of Eastern Thracia belongs to him. The lowlands of this region form a vast triangular plain, bounded by the Tekir Dagh and the coast range on the south, by offshoots from the Rhodope on the west, and by the granitic mountains of Stranja on the east. This is one of the dreariest districts of all Turkey. Swampy depressions and untilled land recall the steppes of Russia; and in summer, when the wind raises clouds of dust, we can imagine ourselves in the midst of a desert. The dreary monotony of this plain is relieved only by the pale contours of distant mountains, and by innumerable artificial mounds of unknown origin. So numerous are these tumuli that they form an essential feature of the landscape, and no artist could convey a just idea of it without introducing into his picture one or more of them.