The Troad belongs in a botanical point of view to the least known countries of Asia-Minor. Though this country has been visited or wandered through by several of the most renowned botanical travellers, such as Forskål (1761) and Dumont d'Urville (1819), who merely visited the island of Tenedos, Olivier (1794 and 1798), Sibthorp (1794?), Barker Webb and Parolini (1819), Aucher-Eloy and Gust. Coquebert de Montbret (1833), who explored the Troad proper, yet these explorations did not lead to detailed communications on the plants of the regions visited, because some of the travellers named visited the Troad in an unfavourable season, midsummer or autumn, whilst others did not publish anything on their collections, of which only some species have here and there become known. At least as much, therefore, as to the botanists by profession, if indeed not more, are we indebted for our knowledge of the Trojan flora to travellers, who besides their principal archaeological, geological, or geographical objects of study, paid also attention to the ever-attractive children of Flora; such were Clarke (1801), Tchihatcheff (1849), Julius Schmidt (1864), and Rudolf Virchow (1879); supplementary information has also been received from Frank Calvert (1879 and 1880). The collections of the three last-named explorers are for the most part given here for the first time (that of J. Schmidt according to the communications of Th. von Heldreich).

The first mention of Thymbra is by Homer. Dolon, when he details to Ulysses the position of the Trojan army outside of Troy, places the Carians, Paeonians, Leleges, Caucones, and Pelasgi, towards the sea; the Lycians, Mysians, Phrygians, and Maeonians, towards Thymbra. This allocation, though it does not establish the geographical position of Thymbra, yet, taken with the more precise information given by Demetrius of Scepsis, is of value; it evidences that a direction opposite to the sea, that is, inland, was intended by the poet. The more modern author places the temple of Apollo Thymbraeus at fifty stadia from Ilium (Novum), at the junction of the river Thymbrius with the Seamander. Thymbra was identified by Hobhouse with Akshi Kioi (the present Thymbra Farm), and Barker Webb recognized the Thymbrius in the Kemar Su. My researches have led to the discovery of another ancient site at Hanaï Tepeh, separated from that of Akshi Kioi by an interval of about five hundred yards (see Map, No. 1538). At Akshi Kioi the remains are of later date than at Hanaï Tepeh. The Homeric site of Thymbra would appear not to be identical with the later town and temple of the Thymbrean Apollo of Demetrius; and subsequent ancient authors appear to have transferred it to Akshi Kioi from Hanaï Tepeh.

As we have seen in the preceding pages, the inhabitants of Novum Ilium held, according to an ancient legend, that Troy, the city of Priam, had not been entirely destroyed by the united Greek army under Agamemnon, and that it had never ceased to be inhabited. This legend is certainly confirmed by Homer, who, when Aeneas was on the point of being killed by Achilles in single combat, makes Poseidon say: “It is fated that Aeneas should be saved, in order that the race and the name of Dardanus may not utterly disappear—Dardanus, whom Zeus loved most of all the sons he begat of mortal women; because the race of Priam has now become odious to the son of Kronos: now, therefore, shall the mighty Aeneas reign over the Trojans, and the sons of his sons hereafter to he born.”

This legend has apparently been also confirmed by the criticism of my pickaæe and spade, for—as visitors can easily convince themselves with their own eyes—the south-eastern corner of the Third, the brick city, has not been destroyed by the conflagration. I must further say that this legend is also confirmed by the relies I have discovered, for—as the reader will see in the succeeding pages—we find among the successors of the burnt city the very same singular idols; the very same primitive bronze battle-axes; the very same terra-cotta vases, with or without tripod feet; the very same double-handled goblets (δέπα ἀμϕικύπελλα); the very same battle-axes of jade, porphyry, and diorite; the same rude stone hammers and saddle-querns of trachyte; the same immense mass of whorls or balls of terracotta with symbolical signs.

The traveller who goes by sea from Constantinople to the town of the Dardanelles, sees on both sides of the Sea of Marmora and the Hellespont a number of conical hills, on the origin of which tradition is silent, and which are universally called by the name of “Tepeh,” a Turkish word signifying merely a low and small hill, but which in the imagination of men has obtained, like the word “tumulus” in the West, the additional signification of a sepulchral mound, covering the remains of a deceased person, or of more than one.

The first of these Tepehs which tradition has assigned to a particular person, is the tumulus on the Thracian Chersonesus, obliquely opposite the town of the Dardanelles, attributed to Hecuba, of which Strabo says: “Between the two (Dardanus and Abydus) the Rhodius falls into the Hellespont, and directly opposite its mouth the Cynossema (κυνὸς σῆμα, or Κυνόσσημα, i.e. Dog's monument), said to be the tomb of Hecuba, stands on the Chersonesus.”

Proceeding from the Dardanelles by land to the Plain of Troy, the traveller passes another tumulus to his left, near the site of Dardanus; immediately afterwards, a third to his right, and a fourth again to his left, above the village of Ren Kioi.

Above the stratum of the Fifth pre-historic city, and just below the ruins of Novum Ilium, I found a vast quantity of very curious pottery, partly hand-made, partly wheel-made, which in shape and fabric, in colour and in the clay, is so utterly different from all the pottery of the preceding pre-historic cities, as well as from the pottery of the upper Aeolic Ilium, that I hesitate whether to refer it to pre-historic or to historic times. Such pottery is particularly plentiful on the slopes of the hill; and as, for reasons before explained, the stratum of the Greek city reaches in those places down to much more than the usual depth, it is found there even at 10 and 20 ft. below the surface. But the usual depth at which it is found on the hill is on an average 6 ft.; sometimes, however, it occurs at a depth of only 3 or 4 ft. below the surface. As neither the Greeks, nor the pre-historic peoples who succeeded each other on the hill of Hissarlik, ever made such pottery, and especially as this pottery occurs in such abundance, it evidently points to a settlement of a different people.

At the beginning of last year Dr. Schliemann asked my help in his explorations at Hissarlik and in the Trojan plain. The journey to Troy was a considerable one, but, after a good deal of hesitation, I resolved to make it. In fact, I could not refuse.

A journey to Troy—how many heads would be turned by the thought of it! Men of the most various callings offered me their company, when it was known that I meant to visit so rare a spot. And yet this was no Swiss tour, where the attraction is in the scenery, though an occasional visit may be paid to the Rütli and Küsznacht, Sempach and Laupen, Murten and St. Jacob an der Birs. It is the Iliad which takes us to Troy. The forms conjured up by the poet fill the traveller's fancy from the first. He wants to see the spots where the long struggle for Helen was fought, the graves where the heroes lie who lost their lives in it. Achilles and Hector stand in the foreground of the vivid picture, which is still engraven, as it was thousands of years ago, on the mind of every educated boy. This picture, it is true, cannot have now all the moving power it had in antiquity. Even Xerxes, as he marched against Greece in the fulness of his might, could not withstand the fascination of these memories.

Above the stratum of ruins of the Fourth City there is a layer of débris about 6 ft. thick, evidently consisting of the remains of houses built of wood and clay. That the people of the fourth City, of which we see innumerable house-walls, should suddenly have abandoned the architecture they were accustomed to, and have built their houses of wood or mud, or of both conjoined, seems incredible. Besides, the rude stone hammers, which are found in such enormous quantities in the fourth city, are no longer found in this stratum; nor do the stone axes, which are so very abundant there, occur again here. Instead of the hundreds of axes I gathered in the fourth city, I collected in all only two here; but one of these—the axe of white jade represented under No. 1288—is, in the opinion of Mr. Story-Maskelyne, the most precious of all my thirteen Trojan jade axes, on account of its extreme rarity. I attribute it to this Fifth City, as it was found at a depth of only 6 ft. The saddle-querns of trachyte, which occurred in the fourth city by hundreds, were very rarely met with here. The forms of the terra-cotta whorls, too, are in innumerable instances different here.