178

SITE OF THE GRECIAN CAMP.

in sight of Ilium where the ships could have been drawn up.

The weight of evidence drawn from Homer is in favour of the northern position, at the mouth of the Scamander, and this is strengthened by the almost undoubted tomb of Achilles there. But an observer, surveying the plain from the hill of Bounarbachi, would conclude, on topographical grounds, that the Grecian camp was south of the bluff coast, as it would be nearer to Troy, and in the direct line to Tenedos, behind which island the poet says the fleet retired, in order to induce the Trojans to believe it had fled. From the southern position, the advance from the camp through the plain to Troy would have been direct and unobstructed; whereas, from the mouth of the Scamander, it would have been necessary to have made a detour to the south, along the bank of the Simoïs in order to reach the city at its sources. It is insisted that the camp must have been near the mouth of the Scamander, as Homer says it was between two promontories, and in a small bay. It is assumed the promontories must have been those of Rhetium and Sigeum, on either side of the Scamander, and that the deposites of the river have filled up the bay. But a good map (see Mauduit's) will show a promontory on either side of the southern position I have indicated, including a well-defined bay.*

In my college days how often had my imagination dwelt upon these plains, and now my eyes beheld them. Then I thought of the proud city of Priam, adorned with majestic towers; now I beheld the miserable hamlet of Bounarbachi, where once stood the capital of the

* See Crutchley's magnificent Map of Greece, recently published in London, in which the north cape is called Cape Troy, and the south Koum Bournou.

SITE OF THE CITY. THE SIMOIS.

179

Trojans, defended on the south and west by the lower hills of the Ida chain, on the east by the Scamander, and on the north by the valour of her heroes. The traces of foundations still to be detected, and the fountains of the Simoï's just at hand, determine its position, which disappointed me in one respect. I saw that Achilles never could have dragged the body of Hector around the city at his chariot wheels, as Homer with poetic license has sung, but must have dragged it to and fro under the walls on the north. Then the plain was filled with brazen-armed warriors, and rang with the shouts of the victors and the wails of the vanquished; now it was destitute of population, and the lowing herds roamed over it. I know not where my unbridled imagination would have ceased to revel upon the reminiscences of tradition and history, had not the pall of night suddenly fallen upon me, and hastened me to rejoin my companions, who had already returned to the hamlet. We took our usual refreshment, and lay down within the area of ancient Troy, and slept profoundly.*

Next morning, before we departed for the Dardanelles, we repaired to the fountains just without the hamlet on the northwest, from whence issues the Simoïs of most modern travellers, but probably the Scamander of Homer. It seems that the two streams have changed names. The Scamander of Homer issued from fountains in the roots of the lower Ida chain, and immedi

* Alexander the Great visited the Troad, and sacrificed at the tomb of Achilles. Troy was even then desolate. To commemorate his visit, he built a new city on the coast, ten or twelve miles farther west, and called it Alexandria Troas. This is the city where Paul preached and administered the sacrament, as mentioned in the twentieth chapter of the Acts. Its magnif icence is attested by the splendid remains scattered through the oak groves which now conceal them by the wayside from the eye of the careless trayeller.

180

THE SIMOIS AND THE SCAMANDER.

ately under the walls of Troy, and, after flowing northward not more than five or six miles through the plain, fell into the Simoïs of the poet about three miles from its mouth. As the battles were fought along the west bank of this little stream of the Scamander, which oftentimes performed wonderful feats in the terrible onsets, it became the principal poetic river. The description of its eddying floods overwhelming hosts of men, and occasionally the gods, being early found inapplicable to the present little stream, its name was naturally transferred to the deep and rapid river that washed the walls of Troy on the east, and careered through the plain to the sea. Hence the Simoïs of the poet became the Scamander of the geographer, the Menderé of the Turks and of modern travellers; and the little brook issuing from the fountains of Bounarbachi, and which was the Scamander of Homer, escaped notice for a thousand years, and upon being found, and its sources and connexion with the main river of the plain answering the description of one of the Homeric rivers, it was called Simoïs, as the other was already in possession of the name Scamander.

Having crossed Mount Ida from the Gulf of Adramyt to the Plain of Berimitch, and traversed the Menderé from its source in Gargarus to its entrance into the Hellespont, a distance of more than fifty miles, and surveyed the Simoïs from its springs to its mouth, and carefully examined the plain, with the Hellespont in front, and Ida in the rear, I am satisfied that they answer to the topography of Homer in all its leading features, and that the city of Priam was situated on the Hill of Bounarbachi, at the foot of which, on the west, are two remarkable groups of fountains, from one of which, Homer says, warm water issued, and from the other cold,

SIMOIS AND THE SCAMANDER.

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forming the Scamander. I could not discover any dif ference in the temperature of these fountains. Upon the fall of Troy, Æneas, and his countrymen who escaped, ascended the Menderé, crossed over Mount Ida perhaps by the road which we had travelled, and, descending to Antandros, near the head of the Gulf of Adramyt, there built a fleet of twenty sail, and thence departed for Italy. As I sat upon the tomb of Hector, walked over the hill of Bounarbachi, and stood by the fountains of the Scamander, I felt that I was at the sources of Epic poetry, for I was on the spot where those great deeds had been performed that gave it birth.

From the fountains of the ancient Scamander, now the River of Bounarbachi, we crossed the plain northwest, and struck the ancient Simoïs, now the Menderson, above the junction of the two rivers, and perhaps four miles from the sea. A small island divided the stream, and this enabled us to ford it. Its greatest depth did not exceed four feet, and the width of the two parts taken together two hundred feet; but there was too much water running rapidly to be lost in the marshy grounds below, and when I passed down the Hellespont in a steamer some weeks after, about the 1st of June, I observed that the river issued into the sea by a clear and well-defined bed, immediately to the northwest of Koum Kale.

From the ford our path lay northeast through fields of grain, and in an hour we came to the high grounds that sweep down from Ida to the sea, and limit the Plain of Troy on this side. From the heights there is a fine view of the snowy summits of Gargarus on the right, the Hellespont close at hand on the left, and in the distance the Thracian Chersonesus, and the islands of Imbros, Lemnos, Tenedos, and Samothrace.

VOL. II.-Q

182

DARDANELLES.-A GALA.- QUARANTINE.

CHAPTER XXIII.

TROAS TO CONSTANTINOPLE.

Approach to Dardanelles.-A Gala.-Quarantine.-Sudden Arrest and Release.-Sleep Broken.-Sanitary Precautions.-Embarcation.-Forts of the Dardanelles.-Sestos and Abydos.-Origin of the Janizaries.-Historical Associations.-Approach to Constantinople.-First View of the City. -Land at Pera.

OUR road lay over the hills that border the Asiatic side of the Dardanelles. They seemed thickly inhabited in comparison with the Plains of Troy, indeed of all Asia Minor. Perhaps they appeared more so, as it was St. George's day, one of the gayest in the festival calendar of the Greek Church, and the whole population thronged the villages in their gala dresses. As we approached the town of Dardanelles, we perceived both banks of its little river alive with picnic and dancing parties, making merry under the wide-spreading trees. The men and women danced together in a ring, with musicians and children in the centre. Delighted with the idea that we should soon be rambling amid these gay groups of the children of ancient Greece, we scarcely noticed the solitary tent on the margin of the stream by our roadside until we were arrested by a quarantine officer. The Dardanelles is the gate to the capital on the side of Egypt and Syria, and hence the cordon sanitaire has a post here, a hundred miles from Constantinople, to prevent the introduction of the plague to the city. We should have brought a teskereh, or clean bill of health, from Smyrna, which we had neglected, as we did not know it was necessary; but one of our sur