1794] A TURKISH FORTRESS 125 standing very accurate researches (made for the advancement of learning, and totally without ideas of following Anacreon's example), we have not been able to get a drop of wine or even brandy in the whole place? We walked, however, to the ruined temple of Bacchus, which is still seen near here, and I only hope, like the Englishman who addressed Jupiter in the capitol, that if ever he gets the better of Mahomet again, he'll remember we took notice of him in his adversity. We have just had a curious adventure with the Turks, which I must tell you. It is now evening (for my letter has been interrupted for a walk to the ruins of Teos). This is a small town, with an old fortification round it; as the Turks have a garrison here they keep about as great a fuss with it as if it was Breda or Bergop-Zoom, and understand about as much of the matter as little Robert. Our poor painter, when the gates were locked, happened to be on the wrong side. In great dismay at finding himself shut out he came to the gate and jabbered German by wholesale; we sent to the porter, the keys were carried to the Aga (the Commandant here); we applied to him, but as he was a great officer, he would not risk opening the gates to the enemy. In vain we talked of our firman from the Porte; there was only one way of opening the gate, a bribe, and to this we had some objections. To complete the history, the poor fellow on the outside, in an amazing fright about robbers if he stayed out, very quietly finished the dispute by climbing over the wall these warriors made such a fuss about, and is just come in grinning. If the Turks find out he is an Austrian, I should not be astonished if they took him up after this as a spy of the Emperor's. A number of them round us are smoking their pipes and are in some amazement at seeing him here; I believe they rather think, by the potcrooks I am now making, that I brought him in by magic. I hope by the time this gets to England you will be expecting at least Henry's return from his Flanders campaigns; I long almost as much to hear his histories as I do to talk about my own, which, for a traveller, is saying a great deal. His tour to the Continent will be a good deal shorter than mine, but the French are not such agreeable travelling company as Stockdale and Wilbraham; so I think the sooner he gets back the better. There are many French at Smyrna, settled as merchants, who sport the cockade, and two frigates in the harbour, to the no little annoyance of our trade there. Why no English ones are sent to protect it when our fleet is superior everywhere else, is one of those secrets that I believe nobody can understand, for no English vessel can without the greatest risk enter the harbour. The sailors in the French vessels all wear the cockade or bonnet rouge, and amuse us with national airs all day long; however, they are now very orderly and well behaved there, thanks to Mr. Liston, who bullied the Turks till they checked them. The English vessels have twice or thrice lately escaped their clutches, and made them quite outrageous about it. They had about a month ago received their new colours, which was some trifling alteration in the flag, and, instead of cruising, were in harbour dancing round the tree of liberty and celebrating a grand national fête. Just at that moment arrived safe an English merchant ship they had been in quest of for a fortnight, and dropped anchor just before them. So much for the news of this quarter of the world. With you, I suppose, frights and fears of internal commotions being over, an invasion is hourly expected, as it was before, when the French were in Holland. If they get to Richmond or Catterick, I beg you will write me word immediately. I now finish my letter from Chismé, a small town on the edge of the sea, opposite Scio, for which we are going to set off immediately almost. I have been riding this morning from near Vourla, and thinking of you the whole way. I felicitated myself heartily, 1794] CHISMÉ 127 I assure you, that Rokeby was not in the climate of Asia; we have travelled for hours through lanes of such beautiful myrtle yesterday and to-day that I am sure if they fell in your way there would not be a window in the whole house without a bush in it. I shall to-morrow write Abney a long account of his farm here, and tell him how his fences and game are situated, whether he has many vagrants, and all information which one justice ought to communicate to another on these occasions. I fear his neighbourhood here is almost as thin of gentlefolks as that of Linley and Measham; however, there are fewer harehunting parsons and attorneys, and the shrubbery walk is much superior, so I don't know whether I shan't counsel a removal. We have for half an hour been making puns, and flatter ourselves that by good pronunciation it will make no bad story for Miss Dering that when I was in this part of Asia several Greek ladies came over from Scio to Chismé. Yours very sincerely and affectionately, CHISMÉ, CHAPTER VI THE TROAD AND THE SITE OF THE HOMERIC TROY: THE ISLANDS OF CHIOS AND LESBOS MORRITT visited the Troad with a book by Lechevalier in his hand. Lechevalier (called Chevalier in his letters) had been secretary in the years 1784-6 to Count Choiseul-Gouffier, the French Ambassador at Constantinople._ His researches in the Troad attracted much notice in England as well as on the Continent; and Morritt adopts with enthusiasm the theory that the Homeric Troy was on the heights of Bali Dagh, near Bunarbashi. The question had been discussed at intervals for some 2,000 years. The natural belief that the Greek colony of Ilium Novum stood on the site of the Homeric Ilium had been disputed as early as 200 B.C., when Demetrius of Scepsis argued that the true site was at a place called the "village of the Ilians" further inland, from some idea, apparently ill-founded, that the sea had receded since the Homeric age. This site is in a marsh and has little to recommend it, and most writers of the Roman Empire and afterwards, until 1784, reverted to the Ilium Novum (ie. the hill known as Hissarlik) as the true site. Lechevalier's arguments for the site near Bunarbashi were the commanding position, and the two springs, hot and cold, mentioned in the Iliad, which he thought that he had found at that spot. His view was almost universally adopted for the next hundred years, so that Morritt cannot be accused of hasty conversion. But since the discoveries from Schliemann's famous excavations in 1871-9 at Hissarlik, confirmed as they seem to have been by still more thorough investigations, especially those of Dörpfeld, most scholars have returned to the old belief that the sites of Old Troy 1794] SITE OF THE HOMERIC TROY 129 and New Troy were the same. It must, of course, be assumed that the Homeric descriptions were written with accurate knowledge of the local features: for there is nothing to discuss if this is not assumed. Objections may be raised to either theory, and advocates of each may sometimes have overstrained the correspondence in minute details; but the objections to the Bunarbashi site, which Morritt describes, are by far the stronger-for instance, its distance from the sea-coast; nor has the spade revealed any pottery or other remains which would suit the Homeric period. On the other hand, the proof from the two springs, on which Morritt's letters lay so much stress, seems to be now discounted. Mr. Leaf, one of the most learned Homeric scholars, who has visited the Troad more than once, writes in a book on Troy published in 1912: "It is no longer possible to use this as evidence; no such combination of hot and cold springs now exists in the plain. All the sources have been tested: some are warmer than others; but the difference is in no case great, and nowhere are two springs of perceptibly different temperature near one another." Morritt himself, as will be seen, confesses to being rather disappointed by the amount of warmth in the so-called hot spring. It may safely be said that the more recent and more complete excavations and discoveries tend to confirm Schliemann's choice of Hissarlik; but it is never wise to dogmatise on any antiquarian subject. Sir Richard Jebb, in his " Homer," written after Schliemann's researches, still adhered to Bunarbashi and rejected Hissarlik; though it may perhaps be questioned whether he would have done so after the more recent spade-work of Dörpfeld and others, and with the light which has been thrown upon Homeric history and Homeric art not only by the discoveries at Mycenae and Tiryns, but more especially by the recent work of Sir Arthur Evans and others in Crete. DEAR AUNT, KOUM-KALEH, November 12, 1794. I write to you at last from the heart of Homer's country, from the shore of the Troad. The Simois |