TO THE PLAIN OF TROY. 91 
sandy bottom; but, upon sounding, this was chap. 
not found to be the case. An appearance so ■ 
remarkable, characterizing these waters, would 
not escape, an allusion at least, in the writings 
of a Poet who was lavish in the epithets he 
bestowed upon the Scamander and the Hellespont. 
It has been reserved for the learning and in- 
genuity of Mr. IValpole, to shew that the whole 
controversy, as far as it has been affected by 
the expression nAATVS 'EAAHSnONTOI, may be 
founded in misconstruction ; that instead of 
* broad Hellespont,' the true reading should be 
* salt Hellespont. It is used in this sense by 
jithen^us : but Casaid'on, in his Commentary 
upon the passage, after citing Hesychius and 
Aristotle, who have given the same meaning to 
(2) " It has been objected, that Homer would not have applied the 
epithet vrXetru; to the Hellespont. Commentators have anticipated the 
objection; and urged, that although the Hellespont, near Sestus and 
Abydus, is not vXutvs, but only a mile in breadth, yet that in its opening 
towards the JEgean, at the embouchure of the Scamander, it is broad. 
Tiip) TO.; iK^oa; rod 'Sxccftd.v'^pou, are the words of the Venetian Scholiast. 
See also the Lexicon of Apollonius ; and Eustathius, p. 4',i'2. But the 
objection, if it be one, should have been answered at once, by saying 
that aXxTvs 'EkX'/Kr-rovTo; is the ' salt Hellespont.^ Tlkarlsy in this sense, 
is used three times by Aristotle, in Metereol. lib. ii. ; and Hesychius gives 
the same meaning. It may be observed, that Damm and Stephanas 
have not mentioned it in their Dictionaries." 
Walpole's MS. Journal. 
