THE TROAD. 



577 



stream, subsequent geographers . continued to the larger river the 

 name which in Homer's time it only bore below the confluence, and 

 looked for the Simois where they could not find it. This alteration 

 in the course of the Scamander, if it was very early (which I strongly 

 suspect it was), accounts for the variance we find between Homer 

 and even the best of the ancient geographers. This system, which 

 Chevalier first adopted, still appears to me so far from being a " wild 

 theory," that it seems to remove the chief difficulties which stand in 

 the way of every other. It is strongly borne out not only by the 

 existence of the two fountains, which, according to the obvious, 

 though not the necessary sense of the only genuine passage relating 

 to the sources of the Scamander in Homer, appear to have been 

 those sources, but also by the tumuli on the hill behind Bounarbachi, 

 which agree with the probable position of the Trojan tombs, and 

 were certainly near the city. As to the nature and heat of these 

 springs and the number of them, they have given rise to more minute 

 researches than when I was there ; and my only excuse for this 

 and many other omissions is, that when I visited the plain, Bryant 

 had not written, and I never dreamt of controversy. The survey I 

 took was merely to satisfy a classical curiosity with respect to Homer, 

 and I neither used a thermometer to the springs, nor took more of a 

 map than just to mark with a pencil some of the incorrect delineations 

 of Chevalier's. You who have been on the spot, will appreciate 

 what I did, and not wonder at what I omitted, under such circum- 

 stances. Every traveller has confirmed what I originally stated with 

 respect to the tradition of one of the springs being hot and the other 

 cold. I call the Kirk Geuse one spring ; for though the water issues 

 from a number of small orifices in the rock, yet being all so near 

 together and forming only one large pool, it is refining far too much 

 to suppose a poet would necessarily speak, as Shakspeare says, by the 

 card, and count every separate crevice. To the touch when I was 

 there, the water of the marble fountain, in which only one spring 

 rises, was warmer than in the larger and more exposed pool formed 

 by the Kirk Geuse. If Homer had heard by a similar inaccurate re- 

 port what we all heard from the tradition of the country, such an 



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