Page:Troja by Heinrich Schliemann.djvu/62

harrem Effendi, was supplied to me by the local authorities; I had to provide him with lodgings and to pay him £7 10s. monthly. The other delegate, Beder Eddin Effendi, was sent to me by the Minister of Public Instruction at Constantinople, by whom he was paid; I had merely to provide him with a bedchamber. I have carried on archæological excavations in Turkey for a number of years, but it had never yet been my ill-fortune to have such a monster of a delegate as Beder Eddin, whose arrogance and self-conceit were only equalled by his complete ignorance, and who considered it his sole office to throw all possible obstacles in my way. As he was in the employ of government, he had the telegraph to the Dardanelles at his disposal, and he used it in the most shameless way to denounce me and my architects to the local authorities. At first the civil governor listened to him, and sent trustworthy men to investigate the charges; but having repeatedly convinced himself that the man had basely calumniated us, he took no further notice of him.

A Turk will always hate a Christian, however well he may be paid by him, and thus it was not difficult for Beder Eddin Effendi to bring all my eleven gendarmes over to his side, and to make so many spies of them. The man became particularly obnoxious and insupportable to us when my architect, Dr. Dörpfeld, having in April imported a surveying instrument for taking measurements and making the plans of Ilium, the circumstance was reported to the military governor of the Dardanelles, Djemal Pasha, who at once communicated it to Said Pasha, the Grand Master of the Artillery at Constantinople, hinting to him his suspicions that we were merely using the excavations at Troy as a pretext for taking plans of the fortress of Koum Kaleh. Said Pasha, who took the same view of the case, at once telegraphed to him to prohibit, not only our use of the surveying instrument, but even our making any plans at all.