ASIA MINOR. 



97 



torj of Sigeum. The ascent was steep, but when we had mounted 

 towards the top we had the gratification of a fine view of the plain 

 of Troy, the winding course of the river through it, the island 

 Tenedos beneath us ; Samothrace, and Imbros, and Lemnos on our 

 right, with a faint view of the Pike of Mount Athos on the opposite 

 continent in the fading distance of the horizon.* 



The objects now before our eyes, and of which we were about to 

 take a nearer view, have been so often confronted with the scenery 

 described in the Iliad or Odyssey ; the fountains, hillocks, streamlets, 

 nay, almost every stone on the plain beneath us, have been so minutely 

 appropriated to some circumstance of the Trojan war, that I shall 

 confine myself to the humble task of recording a few incidents in our 

 tour, marking the character or manners of the present inhabitants of 

 the Troad, and shall rely on my learned and ingenious companion 

 for a detailed examination of the natural features and the existing 

 monuments of the country, with the view of ascertaining their relation 

 to the description of local scenery in the poems of Homer. 



When my fellow-traveller and myself were permitted to land from 

 the frigate which was taking the embassy to the Porte in 1799, the 

 celebrated Sigean inscription and a fragment of exquisite sculpture were 

 pointed out to us in the porch of the village. The first circumstance 

 now mentioned to us by the Greek priest, in whose house we lodged, 

 was the loss of these treasures, which, he said, had been carried off by 

 a party of English soldiers from the Dardanelles (where they were 

 employed in improving the forts), accompanied by their officers, and 

 sanctioned by a Bouyurdee from Hadim Oglou, and an imperial fir- 

 man from Constantinople, declaring that these marbles had been 

 given by the Sultan to Loi'd Elgin, the English ambassador. The 

 sighs and tears with which the Greek priest accompanied his story 

 did not, however, arise from any veneration he bore to the antiquity 

 of these marbles, from any knowledge of their remote history, or any 



* " Clare conspicitux- Athos," says Vossius, " cum coelum est serenum, ex Hellesponto 

 et Asiatico litore, multo autem clariiis ex Ida monte." In Melam. 119. 



O 



