Page:Troja by Heinrich Schliemann.djvu/63

Beder Eddin Effendi no sooner heard of this, than he began to denounce us repeatedly to the military governor, alleging that, in spite of the prohibition, we measured and took plans clandestinely; and he succeeded in irritating that officer against us so much, that he prohibited us from taking any measurements at all within the excavations. Having obtained this, Beder Eddin Effendi declared that he and the watchmen, whom he had placed over us, could not distinguish whether we were measuring, or merely taking notes, or making drawings; he therefore interdicted us from taking notes or making drawings within the excavations, and continually threatened to arrest my architects and send them in chains to Constantinople in case of their disobedience.

I applied for redress to the German Embassy, explaining that the miserable fortress of Koum Kaleh was at a distance of five miles from Hissarlik, and altogether invisible from here; that I merely intended to make new plans of the Acropolis and of the lower city, instead of the old plans (I. and II. in Ilios), which, in consequence of my excavations of this year, were no longer quite correct. The chargé d'affaires of the German Empire at Constantinople, Baron von Hirschfeld, took the matter at once in hand, but neither he nor his excellent first dragoman, Baron von Testa, could effect anything against the obstinacy of the Grand Master of the Artillery, who did not even attend to the orders of the Grand Vizier.

It is true that, in spite of Beder Eddin Effendi's vigilance, we succeeded in taking all the notes we wanted, but to take measurements came to be out of the question. In this manner the five months' Trojan campaign went on, and finished at the end of July, with continual vain efforts on the part of the German Embassy at Constantinople to obtain for us permission to make the plans, and amidst the daily and hourly vexations caused us by our insufferable delegate, Beder Eddin Effendi: in short, a