I should add that the excavations at Troy were made by Dr. Schliemann, at his own expense and under his personal supervision. He had many difficulties to contend with, including the opposition of the Turkish government and the thievish propensities of his workmen. They robbed him at all opportunities, and it was recently ascertained that by far the larger part of the gold vases and other valuables from the ruins of the palace were concealed by the workmen, and their discovery was quite unknown to him. The Doctor was accompanied by his wife, who assisted him in every way in her power; but it was impossible for them to be everywhere at once, and to supervise excavations going on in half a dozen places simultaneously.
When we were ready for departure we packed our baggage and drove to the Piraeus, where we had a choice of two steamers to Syra. One was the Stamboul, our old acquaintance, on which we had passed a very rough night; the other was a Greek steamer, and we determined to inspect her.
A very brief inspection of her cabin was enough for us. The captain looked as if he hadn’t washed himself since he was born, and the steward appeared never to have been guilty of such an act.
The rooms had very little bedding, and the little that they possessed was so dirty that it had evidently been used for the door-matting of a well-patronized bar room in muddy weather, and had afterwards served as the flooring of a pig-pen. The steward spoke nothing but Greek, and he had no assistant; as near as we could make out, he was steward, head-waiter, chambermaid, assistant-waiter, cabin boy, cook, and forecastle attendant—anything you might happen to want. We were not long in deciding how we should travel. The Stamboul was not all that fancy paints a passenger ship, but she was infinitely preferable to the Mavrocoupolo, or whatever her outlandish name was.
This Greek steamer had the monopoly of the passenger trade between Syra and the Piraeus, and the other lines were not allowed to sell tickets for that route. When we came to Greece, we bought tickets from Constantinople to the Piraeus, and had no trouble; we now wanted to buy one to Syra by the Austrian Lloyd line, where we were to change to a ship of the Messageries Maritimes (French). But we couldn’t do anything of the kind, and the only way we could get around it was to buy third-class tickets to Chio (the first port beyond Syra), and then pay to the steward on board the Stamboul the difference between first and third-class prices.
Was there ever a law so carefully drawn that somebody could not devise a plan to get around it?
The company bit us pretty badly—the fleas helped them a little—as we found that we had to pay very dearly for our connivance at violation of the Greek law. This was the way of it.
We bought third-class tickets to Chio and went on board, where we paid the steward the difference between first and third-class. In first-class fare, where tickets are bought at the agencies, meals and rooms are included. But after paying full rates, we were told that we had only secured the privileges of the cabin, and must pay extra for meals and berths.
We called for the captain, and protested that it was a swindle. He shrugged his shoulders, showed us the regulations, and said we must pay. If we didn’t he must put us in prison at Syra.
We thought the prison might be something like the cabin of the Greek steamer, and we paid the bill with the rapidity of a well-trained flash of lightning. But we didn’t change our opinion on the subject, and to this hour we think that the directors of the Austrian Lloyds are———