Page:Troja by Heinrich Schliemann.djvu/59

these terms, and also made him, when I left, a present of all my barracks at Hissarlik, for he is perfectly honest, and as purser and majordomo in a large camp in the wilderness, or in exploring expeditions, he can never be excelled. But his wages were the least advantage he had with me, for he derived enormous profits from the shop which was kept on his account by his brother, and in which he sold bread, tobacco, and brandy, on credit to my workmen, whose debts to him he always deducted in paying them on Saturday evening.

I had brought with me from Athens an excellent servant named Oedipus Pyromalles, a native of Xanthe, whose monthly wages were £2 16s., and a female cook, named Jocasté, who got £1 12s. monthly, I kept also a wheelwright, whose wages were £9 monthly, and a carpenter who received £4 a month. I had brought a good riding-horse with me from Athens, which stood well the great fatigue of the five months' campaign, but in the last week he broke down, so that I had to leave him behind. The stables stood on the south side against the store-barrack and the stone kitchen.

My instruments for working consisted of forty iron crowbars, some of them 2.25 m. long and 0.05 m. in diameter;^[1] two jacks; a hundred large iron shovels, and as many pickaxes; fifty large hoes (called here by the Turkish name tchapa), such as are used in the vineyards, and which were exceedingly useful to me in filling the débris into the baskets; a windlass; 100 wheelbarrows, most of which had iron wheels; twenty man-carts, which were drawn by one man and pushed by two from behind, and a number of horse-carts. As I had to provide my workmen with good drinking water, I kept a labourer and a boy exclusively