138 



ASIA MINOR. 



cooking process to be finished before we could satisfy our hunger. 

 The olives gathered ripe and preserved in rancid oil, and the caviar, 

 which the Greek can eat with pleasure, are disgusting to an English 

 palate ; and these with sour bread and bad wine are the only pro- 

 visions a traveller can expect to meet with, unless he has sent for- 

 ward some person to provide better entertainment. 



In Turkish villages he meets with worse reception ; and if a 

 mattress and pillow be not among the traveller's store, he must 

 often stretch his weary limbs on a dusty mat laid on an uneven 

 mud floor. The provisions he generally meets with in these places 

 are coffee and pilaw, made of boiled rice with mutton fat or suet, or 

 rancid butter melted into it ; and as it is extremely difficult to 

 procure even two or three horses, it is impracticable to take those 

 things which might make amends for the inconveniences of the road. 



The petty Agas are sometimes insolent and suspicious of travellers, 

 and interrupt their researches by private orders to their guides to 

 lead them wrong, or by giving false information to travellers them- 

 selves ; as they conceive all the curiosity of Franks in examining ruins 

 and inscriptions is directed chiefly to discover concealed treasures ; 

 and if the traveller ask questions concerning the course of rivers, 

 and the distances of towns, it is suspected that it is for the sake of 

 facilitating some meditated invasion of their country ; nor can the 

 Sultan's firman, or even the escort of a Janissary of the Porte, always 

 destroy such suspicions. 



We now prepared to take leave of the interesting region of the 

 Troad, the Scamandrian plain, Mount Ida, and the shores of the 

 Hellespont. It would be an invidious task to attempt destroying 

 any of the enthusiasm that is felt in reading some of the immortal 

 works of the ancient writers, by showing in what instances they have 

 deviated from geographical precision in their allusions to local 

 scenery ; and indeed it is hardly allowable to look for perfect and 

 minute resemblance at the distance of nearly three thousand years. 

 Natural and artificial changes must have taken place to a considerable 

 extent in that time, in the face of the country, in the courses of the 



