Fancy was animated as I strolled along the storied Simois, which “sprouted ambrosia-like pasture” for the horses of Hera and Athena, and the serpentine Scamander—“fair-flowing with silver eddies”—which formerly entered a bay upon the shores of which the Greeks hauled up their ships, and as I stood before the reputed tumuli of Achilles and Patroclus, Ajax and Antilochus. But it was more vivacious far when I ascended the hill of Hissarlik, which Schliemann has identified as the site of Homer’s Troy. From the highest point of this elevation one has a view that is truly entrancing. On the north is the Hellespont—the road, as the ancients conceived, to the Cimmerians and the Hyperboreans—with all its myth and legend. To the west are the murmurous waters of the island-studded Ægean. Near the coast line is vine-clad Tenedos, whither the Greek fleet withdrew while the wooden horse was being taken into Troy. Further beyond is Lemnos, where Hephæstus is said to have fallen when he was hurled from Olympus. To the northwest is rock-ribbed Imbros, and further afield is Samothrace, from the towering peak of which Poseidon looked down upon Troy during its investment by the Greeks. To the northeast is the eminence of Callicolone, whence Apollo and Mars, the protectors of Ilium, watched the operations of the contending Greek and Trojan armies. To the eastward is snow-crested Ida—whence Zeus observed the combatants—whose lofty pines and valonas
Wave aloft
Their tuneful, scented, dove-embowering shade,
And ’neath twilight broods as gray and soft
As when of yore the shepherd Paris strayed
With glad Œnone; while their bleating flocks
Grazed the wild thyme bright with ambrosial dew;
And lovers piping ’neath the o’ershadowing rocks
Laded with love the breezes as they flew.
It was on such panoramas that Helen was wont to fix her wistful gaze—fair Helen, who