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.