It Is True I See Now, On Looking To The
Passage, That Neptune, When The Work Of Destruction Was Done,
Turned Back The Rivers To Their Ancient Ways:
" . . . [Greek verse],"
But their old channels passing through that light pervious soil
would have been lost in the nine days' flood, and perhaps the god,
when he willed to bring back the rivers to their ancient beds, may
have done his work but ill: it is easier, they say, to destroy
than it is to restore.
We took to our horses again, and went southward towards the very
plain between Troy and the tents of the Greeks, but we rode by a
line at some distance from the shore. Whether it was that the lay
of the ground hindered my view towards the sea, or that I was all
intent upon Ida, or whether my mind was in vacancy, or whether, as
is most like, I had strayed from the Dardan plains all back to
gentle England, there is now no knowing, nor caring, but it was not
quite suddenly indeed, but rather, as it were, in the swelling and
falling of a single wave, that the reality of that very sea-view,
which had bounded the sight of the Greeks, now visibly acceded to
me, and rolled full in upon my brain. Conceive how deeply that
eternal coast-line, that fixed horizon, those island rocks, must
have graven their images upon the minds of the Grecian warriors by
the time that they had reached the ninth year of the siege!
conceive the strength, and the fanciful beauty, of the speeches
with which a whole army of imagining men must have told their
weariness, and how the sauntering chiefs must have whelmed that
daily, daily scene with their deep Ionian curses!
And now it was that my eyes were greeted with a delightful
surprise. Whilst we were at Constantinople, Methley and I had
pored over the map together. We agreed that whatever may have been
the exact site of Troy, the Grecian camp must have been nearly
opposite to the space betwixt the islands of Imbros and Tenedos,
"[Greek verse],"
but Methley reminded me of a passage in the Iliad in which Neptune
is represented as looking at the scene of action before Ilion from
above the island of Samothrace. Now Samothrace, according to the
map, appeared to be not only out of all seeing distance from the
Troad, but to be entirely shut out from it by the intervening
Imbros, which is a larger island, stretching its length right
athwart the line of sight from Samothrace to Troy. Piously
allowing that the dread Commoter of our globe might have seen all
mortal doings, even from the depth of his own cerulean kingdom, I
still felt that if a station were to be chosen from which to see
the fight, old Homer, so material in his ways of thought, so averse
from all haziness and overreaching, would have MEANT to give the
god for his station some spot within reach of men's eyes from the
plains of Troy. I think that this testing of the poet's words by
map and compass may have shaken a little of my faith in the
completeness of his knowledge. Well, now I had come; there to the
south was Tenedos, and here at my side was Imbros, all right, and
according to the map, but aloft over Imbros, aloft in a far-away
heaven, was Samothrace, the watch-tower of Neptune!
So Homer had appointed it, and so it was; the map was correct
enough, but could not, like Homer, convey THE WHOLE TRUTH. Thus
vain and false are the mere human surmises and doubts which clash
with Homeric writ!
Nobody whose mind had not been reduced to the most deplorable
logical condition could look upon this beautiful congruity betwixt
the Iliad and the material world and yet bear to suppose that the
poet may have learned the features of the coast from mere hearsay;
now then, I believed; now I knew that Homer had PASSED ALONG HERE,
that this vision of Samothrace over-towering the nearer island was
common to him and to me.
After a journey of some few days by the route of Adramiti and
Pergamo we reached Smyrna. The letters which Methley here received
obliged him to return to England.
CHAPTER V - INFIDEL SMYRNA
Smyrna, or Giaour Izmir, "Infidel Smyrna," as the Mussulmans call
it, is the main point of commercial contact betwixt Europe and
Asia. You are there surrounded by the people, and the confused
customs of many and various nations; you see the fussy European
adopting the East, and calming his restlessness with the long
Turkish "pipe of tranquillity"; you see Jews offering services, and
receiving blows; {8} on one side you have a fellow whose dress and
beard would give you a good idea of the true Oriental, if it were
not for the gobe-mouche expression of countenance with which he is
swallowing an article in the National; and there, just by, is a
genuine Osmanlee, smoking away with all the majesty of a sultan,
but before you have time to admire sufficiently his tranquil
dignity, and his soft Asiatic repose, the poor old fellow is
ruthlessly "run down" by an English midshipman, who has set sail on
a Smyrna hack. Such are the incongruities of the "infidel city" at
ordinary times; but when I was there, our friend Carrigaholt had
imported himself and his oddities as an accession to the other and
inferior wonders of Smyrna.
I was sitting alone in my room one day at Constantinople, when I
heard Methley approaching my door with shouts of laughter and
welcome, and presently I recognised that peculiar cry by which our
friend Carrigaholt expresses his emotions; he soon explained to us
the final causes by which the fates had worked out their wonderful
purpose of bringing him to Constantinople. He was always, you
know, very fond of sailing, but he had got into such sad scrapes
(including, I think, a lawsuit) on account of his last yacht, that
he took it into his head to have a cruise in a merchant vessel, so
he went to Liverpool, and looked through the craft lying ready to
sail, till he found a smart schooner that perfectly suited his
taste.
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