The boundaries of this channel were, on the north side, the Peninsula of Gallipoli which separated it from the Gulf of Saros, and, on the southern, the coast of Asia Minor, upon the westernmost portion of which had stood the old town of Troy. The Peninsula of Gallipoli was a narrow tongue of land, not more than three miles wide where it sprouted from the mainland, swelling to twelve just above the Narrows, but only five miles across at the Narrows themselves. It was almost wholly arid or brush-covered, with a central and irregular spine of hills, rising, in the plateau of Kilid Bahr and the heights {110} of Krithia and Achi Baba, to 970, 700, and 600 feet respectively, and, except for a few small beaches and descending stream-beds, facing both north and south in low, precipitous cliffs. The southern or Asiatic shores of the Dardanelles were somewhat lower and more broken, the hills inland rising to 3,000 feet, many of them being plentifully wooded. Of these the most famous was Kag Dagh, the Mount Ida of the Gods, whence, in the Homeric poems, they had looked down upon the twenty years' siege of Troy. Every yard of these shores, indeed, as of the waters between them, was instinct with real or legendary history. Across the Dardanelles, Leander had swum to Hero. Over the Narrows, Xerxes had built his bridge of boats. By the same road, a hundred and fifty years later, Alexander of Macedon had marched to the conquest of Asia; and it had been across the Narrows, in the middle of the fourteenth century, that the Turks from Asia had swarmed into Europe. Constantinople and all but a few miles around it had soon been encircled by their advance, and had been finally occupied by Sultan Mohamed II about a hundred years afterward. That had been in 1453, and, nine years later, recognizing the vital importance of the Dardanelles, Mohamed II had built the first two forts of the many that were afterward designed to protect them. These were the Old Castles, the Castles of Europe and Asia, on either side of the Narrows; and it had not been till two hundred years later that the two New Castles had been built lower down, at the Ægean {111} entrance. From that time onward, till 1864, the fortifications of the Dardanelles may be said to have remained mediæval; but, upon the advice of Great Britain, then Turkey's protector, new works had been undertaken, and, after the Peace of San Stefano in 1878, there had been a further strengthening of both coasts, the later fortifications having been German and the artillery provided by Krupps. Since that date, the Dardanelles had never been forced against armed resistance, and only once before, in modern times, when the British admiral Duckworth in 1807 had made a plucky but not very long-lived demonstration before Constantinople--having had to retire, not without damage, owing to the precarious nature of his communications.