Troy, you will see if you look at the map, stands, or stood, nearly in the north-western corner of Asia Minor, its territory reaching up to the shore of that narrow sea-channel which used to be called the Hellespont and is now called the Dardanelles. Any Greek ships wishing to go for trade through the Hellespont must pass close along the coast of Troy land, so close that any people who had the command of the land could sally out and interfere with their passage. The current flows out westward through the Hellespont, and the wind usually blows from north-west, against the ships going eastward. The whole point of Dr. Leaf's argument is that at Troy there was a market, or fair, at which the produce of the countries in the east was sold to the Greeks and other people in the west, and that the Trojans derived much profit from this market. The profit from this market they would of course lose if the western people were able to sail up through the Hellespont and do their trade direct with the people along the shore of the Black Sea. The Trojans were, in fact, what we nowadays call "middle-men," and you know how we are always trying to bring the consumer, the person who wants to use the thing produced, into direct touch with the producer, and so to do away with the profit which the middle-man charges and which he again puts on to the price of the thing when he sells it to the consumer. The Greeks were the consumers. They wanted to do away with the middle-men, that is to say {126} with the Trojans, and that, far more probably than the bringing back of the beautiful lady, was why they spent so many years and so many lives in the siege of Troy. You will remember what we said before about the kind of ships that these people had. They were propelled by rowing, or by sails which were only useful when the wind was nearly directly behind them. They had to put in to some harbourage every night, because they did not dare to go along in the dark, without charts and without compass and without knowledge of how to steer by the stars. Even in daytime they hardly dared to go out of sight of land and of the landmarks which they knew. The islands in these seas lie so close to each other that it was possible for them to creep along in this way from one to the other and so to the coasts of Asia from Greece. And there was another reason why they could not go long voyages--they had no light cisterns in which to carry fresh water. They had to take it in heavy earthern jars. This need for water they could supply from rivers which ran out westward through Troy land. They would lie along the coast there, as they traded with the Trojan middle-men, or, possibly, as they waited for a favouring wind to go through the Hellespont, which the Trojans might allow them to do on payment of some toll money, as we should call it, for the permission.