April iii.
We continue anchored at the same place, being all this day entirely becalmed. And the day following, the calm having changed into a contrary wind detained us still at the same anchor. But however disagreeable this interruption in the course of our voyage might prove to some others of the company, the leisure of those two days was to me very grateful. Nor could I esteem it any loss of time, but rather an advantage, on account of the favourable and unexpected opportunity it afforded me of visiting two so famous castles, together with the villages adjoining to them[61]. Going ashore therefore in the captain’s pinnace to the town on the Asian side (formerly called Abýdos[62], but by the Turks Eskí Natolia Hisar) with great pleasure I walked about the place, but found no footsteps of antiquity[63]. The town is large, but mean; yet famous for a curious sort of earthen ware finely glazed, which is made here, and vended in great quantities. The castle is intire, of a square figure, with bastions projecting at each corner, and with one side flanks the water on a level shore; where are to be seen betwixt twenty and thirty vast guns, such as perhaps are no where else to be found, except in some other parts of Turkey. They are of brass, and have a bore at least three quarters of a yard diameter; and are charged with stone bullets of the same dimensions, which lie at hand spherically cut. The charge of powder, as I was informed on the place by the barút agá of Smyrna, is an hundred and five okes. From Abýdos I crossed over in a small wherry to Sestos[64], that is, from Natolia to Rumeli Hisar, and in the way observed the art of the boatman in avoiding the force of the current, a circumstance mentioned by Strabo[65]. This town stands on a precipice, descending steeply towards the sea shore; and is better built, tho less, than Abýdos. It has a castle consisting of a triangular tower, enclosed within an high wall of this
figure, and that again with another triangular wall, all surrounded with a deep foss. In the same level with the water are mounted about thirty guns, of the same or rather bigger size than those of Natolia Hisar; and by each lie great heaps of stones, cut spherically to the dimensions of each canon. In relation to this town of Sestos, and the tower of Leander, once adjoining to the shore a little above the town, I remembered that request of Musaeus:
Σὺ δ’ εἴποτε κεῖθι περήσεις,
Δίζεό μοι τινὰ πύργον[66].