----At half-past seven in the evening, we left Smyrna by the Scamandre, a French government steamer, and were soon gliding over a sea smooth as glass. The soft tints of the twilight spread gradually around us, and to a beautiful day there succeeded one of those marvellous nights, during which one cannot bring one's-self to the determination of retiring to rest. The dawn of day surprised me on deck. In the morning we neared the land, which presented to our view a desert plain, covered with dwarf oak. This was the site of ancient Troy; we were coasting near those famous fields, _ubi Troja fuit_; that stream which was throwing itself before our eyes into the sea, was formerly called the "Simois;" those two hillocks which we saw upon the coast, were the tombs of Hector and Patroclus; that huge blue mountain which in the distance raised towards the sky its three peaks covered with snow, was Ida; and behind us, from the midst of the sparkling waves, rose the island of Tenedos. All conversation between the passengers from many nations had long since ceased, and I contemplated in silence that grim desert, which, at Eton, I had dreamed of as full of movement and sound, and that calm sea which I had so often figured to myself as covered with the ships of Agamemnon, of Ulysses, and of Achilles the "Impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer." At mid-day we entered the Dardanelles, and several hours afterwards, we cast anchor between Sestos and Abydos, before a small white town, containing no remarkable objects. Sestos and Abydos, which it must be owned would not be by any means celebrated, were it not for the enterprises which cost Leander his life and Lord Byron an ague, are two hamlets, which, like the greater portion of Turkish villages, offer in no shape whatever what it is the fashion to term the Oriental type. They are composed of an assemblage of rose-coloured houses, whose large red roofs, seen through the verdure and flowers, call to one's mind the description of a Chinese village.