After inspecting the fortifications of Chanak Kalesi and Kilid Bahr and making a visit to the site of ancient Abydos, whence Xerxes is supposed to have surveyed his vast army as it crossed the Hellespont, and whence one has a splendid view of the narrowest part of the Strait, we prepared to continue our journey to the site of ancient Troy. Our first objective was Eren Keui, a flourishing Greek village, where we purposed stopping over night. This short trip of about three hours we made on horseback. Our road lay along the edge of the Strait over wooded hills, well-cultivated valleys, and picturesque villages surrounded by numerous vineyards and olive groves. From the hills we had splendid views of the Dardanelles, the Thracian Chersonese, the distant Ægean, and “many-fountained Ida” beyond the Trojan plain. On our way we passed the site of Dardanus--a town also known as Teucris--from which the Dardanelles takes its name. The epithet Hellespont, Sea of Helle--which has also been given to the Strait--is derived from the mythical Helle, who is said to have been drowned near the southern entrance of the channel that bears her name. From an eminence near Eren Keui, which we reached under an overclouded sky, we were captivated by the fascinating prospect that burst upon our view. For some miles ahead of us, lying in a tremulous azure haze, _We saw the dark outline of the Trojan plain,_ _Misty and dim, as things at distance seem_ _Through the fast waning light of summer eve._ We lost no time in reaching the spot which, for me at least, had been one of peculiar and ever-growing interest since, as a youth, I had fallen under the magic spell of the immortal author of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_. And I was not long on the plain of Troy when I realized the full force of Byron’s words when he declares: It is one thing to read the _Iliad_ at Sigeum and on the tumuli, or by the springs with Mount Ida above and the plain and the rivers of the Archipelago around you, and another thing to trim your taper over it in a snug library--_this I know_.[65] But there is nothing in this historic region that will appeal to the ordinary tourist. It is a circumscribed plain about eight miles long by four broad, on which he will see little beyond a few bare hillocks and tumuli and occasional hunts or villages of the poor people who here have their home,[66] and hear little as he treads his way through the scattered brakes that cover much of the ground except the voice of a solitary bird which at intervals bursts into song and then is still.