It was during the time that the Salsette lay off Cape Janissary that Lord Byron first undertook to swim across the Hellespont.  Having crossed from the castle of Chanak-Kalessi, in a boat manned by four Turks, he landed at five o’clock in the evening half a mile above the castle of Chelit-Bauri, where, with an officer of the frigate who accompanied him, they began their enterprise, emulous of the renown of Leander.  At first they swam obliquely upwards, rather towards Nagara Point than the Dardanelles, but notwithstanding their skill and efforts they made little progress.  Finding it useless to struggle with {156} the current, they then turned and went with the stream, still however endeavouring to cross.  It was not until they had been half an hour in the water, and found themselves in the middle of the strait, about a mile and a half below the castles, that they consented to be taken into the boat, which had followed them.  By that time the coldness of the water had so benumbed their limbs that they were unable to stand, and were otherwise much exhausted.  The second attempt was made on the 3rd of May, when the weather was warmer.  They entered the water at the distance of a mile and a-half above Chelit-Bauri, near a point of land on the western bank of the Bay of Maito, and swam against the stream as before, but not for so long a time.  In less than half an hour they came floating down the current close to the ship, which was then anchored at the Dardanelles, and in passing her steered for the bay behind the castle, which they soon succeeded 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.