Then Signora Carletti took me to the top of the house to show me the meteorological room of which she is superintendent, and which is in connection with the main meteorological observatory at Rome. Again I found everything in admirable order, and left the house not a little pleased and impressed with everything I had seen. [1889.] Homer’s Hot and Cold Springs _The following extract is taken from a memorandum Butler made of a visit he paid to Greece and the Troad in the spring of_ 1895. _In the_ Iliad (_xxii._ 145) _Homer mentions hot and cold springs where the Trojan women used to wash their clothes_. _There are no such springs near Hissarlik_, _where they ought to be_, _but the American Consul at the Dardanelles told Butler there was something of the kind on Mount Ida_, _at the sources of the Scamander_, _and he determined to see them after visiting Hissarlik_. _He was provided with an interpreter_, _Yakoub_, _an attendant_, _Ahmed_, _an escort of one soldier and a horse_. _He went first to the Consul’s farm at Thymbra_, _about five miles from Hissarlik_, _where he spent the night and found it_ “_all very like a first-class New Zealand sheep-station_.” _The next day he went to Hissarlik and saw no reason for disagreeing with the received opinion that it is the site of Troy_. _He then proceeded to Bunarbashi and so to Bairemitch_, _passing on the way a saw-mill where there was a Government official with twenty soldiers under him_. _This official was much interested in the traveller and directed his men to take carpets and a dish of trout_, _caught that morning in the Scamander_, _and carry them up to the hot and cold springs while he himself accompanied Butler_. _So they set off and the official_, _Ismail_, _showed him the way and pointed out the springs_, _and there is a long note about the hot and cold water_. And now let me return to Ismail Gusbashi, the excellent Turkish official who, by the way, was with me during all my examination of the springs, and whose assurances of their twofold temperature I should have found it impossible to doubt, even though I had not caught one warmer cupful myself. His men, while we were at the springs, had spread a large Turkey carpet on the flower-bespangled grass under the trees, and there were three smaller rugs at three of the corners. On these Ismail and Yakoub and I took our places. The other two were cross-legged, but I reclining anyhow. The sun shimmered through the spring foliage. I saw two hoopoes and many beautiful birds whose names I knew not. Through the trees I could see the snow-fields of Ida far above me, but it was hopeless to think of reaching them. The soldiers and Ahmed cooked the trout and the eggs all together; then we had boiled eggs, bread and cheese and, of course, more lamb’s liver done on skewers like cats’ meat. I ate with my pocket-knife, the others using their fingers in true Homeric fashion.