Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/824

804 to a grocer in Fürstenberg, where he worked for five years from five o'clock in the morning till eleven at night on a maximum yearly salary of thirty dollars. He was able to gratify his archæological tastes in this situation by hiring a drunken but learned miller's clerk to recite to him lines from Homer. One day he broke a blood-vessel while trying to lift a barrel, and was discharged as no longer of value to his employer. Utterly destitute, he took passage in a vessel for South America, was shipwrecked, found his way to Amsterdam, and obtained a light employment, in connection with which he was able to read a little every day. He thus gradually acquired a good knowledge of English, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. In 1844 he entered the office of Messrs. Schröder & Co. on a comfortable salary and began to learn Russian, preparatory to taking an agency for the house in St. Petersburg. He soon started in business in that place on his own account. In 1850 he came to California, where he became an American citizen and the possessor of $400,000. He returned to Russia, continued his business, and learned Swedish and Polish. After the Crimean War he learned Greek and then devoted two years to the study of Greek literature. In 1858 he traveled through northern Europe, Italy, Egypt, and the lands of ancient Greece. Being compelled by a lawsuit to return to Russia and stay there three years, he went into business again and made more money. Before beginning his life-work, for which the opportunity at last offered, he-made a voyage around the world and published his first book, La Chine et le Japon, in 1866. Having dug experimentally, without important results, at Ithaca, he began in 1870 his excavations in the Troad to verify the accuracy of Homer's account of the lost Troy, in the literal reality of every part of which he fully believed. He began first at the place called Bounarbashi, which the learned world had agreed was the site of the ancient city. Having dug and examined the topography long enough to satisfy himself that nothing was to be found there, he tried the mound of Hissarlik. Here he unearthed six cities which had succeeded each other on the same site, four of them at least prehistoric, and one of which, bearing the marks of a great conflagration and being rich in relics, he was satisfied was Homer's Troy. For security in performing this work, Dr. Manatt tells us: "As an American citizen he took out our passports for himself, his family, and his servants; and it may as well be remembered that Troy was uncovered under the protection of our flag." The results of these explorations were described in the books Troy and its Remains, and Ilios, the appearance of which was the signal for an active discussion of the merits of his discoveries. While many doubted the accuracy of his identification of one of the cities with the real Troy, it was generally agreed that he had