Chap. IV. GROUP OF GISTS AND prejudice or Turkish apathy at an earlier stage of the busi- BOOK III, ness. The maritime part of the duty had been entrusted to ANOTHER Captain GRAVES, of H.M. Ship Beacon. The captain left his ship at Smyrna; sailed with FELLOWS for the Xanthus, in a steam-packet; but omitted to provide himself with the needful flat-bottomed boats. When they reached the site of the marbles which were to be carried away, Captain February.. GRAVES said he would not have any of the stores taken down the river; that stores must be obtained from Malta; and that he would take all hands away from the diggings at the beginning of March. The reader may imagine the reflections of the eager discoverer at this sudden check,coming, as it did, at the very beginning of the burst. He took a solitary walk of many hours, he tells us, before he could resolve upon his course of action. He saw before him, to use his own words, 'a mine of treasure.' He had willing hands to work it; ample firmans to stave off opposition; nothing deficient save boats and tackle. A year might possibly pass in awaiting them from Malta; and, meanwhile, the ignorance of the peasantry, the indiscreet curiosity of travellers, or the sudden growth of political complications, might destroy the enterprise irrecoverably. He resolved, in his perplexity, to construct by his own exertions tackle that would suffice for the removal to the coast; got native help in addition to the willing efforts― however unscientific-of the honest sailors of the Beacon; succeeded in getting a portion of the precious objects of his quest to the waterside, before the arrival of the ship; and got them also strongly cased up. Then he sailed with GRAVES for Malta. The worthy captain resigned the honourable task-to him so unwelcome-into the hands of Admiral Sir Edward OWEN. A new expedition started from Malta at the end of April, and brought away seventy 1841, Ibid., pp. 440, seqq. Book III, Chap. IV. ANOTHER GROUP OF eight cases of sculpture in June; leaving the splendid but too-heavy winged-chariot-tomb'-so called by its discoverer in one place, and elsewhere called 'horse-tomb,' but since ascertained to be the tomb of a Lycian satrap named PAIAFA; it is adorned with figures of Glaucus, or ENGLAND OF perhaps of Sarpedon, in a four-horse chariot-until next year. The seventy-eight cases were brought to England by the Queen's ship Cambridge in the following December. GISTS AND ARRIVAL IN THE FIRST SERIES OF XANTHIAN MARBLES. Dec., 1841. On the fourteenth of May, 1842, the Trustees of the British Museum thus recorded their sense of Mr. FELLOWS' public services:—The Trustees desire to express their sense of Mr. FELLOWS' public spirit, in voluntarily undertaking to lend to so distant an expedition the assistance of his local knowledge and personal co-operation. They have viewed with great satisfaction the decision and energy evinced by Mr. FELLOWS in proceeding from Smyrna to Constantinople, and obtaining the necessary authority for the removal of the marbles; as well as his judicious directions at Xanthus, by which the most desirable of the valuable monuments of antiquity formerly brought to light by him, together with several others, of scarcely less interest, now for the first time discovered and excaof the British vated, have been placed in safety, and-as the Trustees 14 May, 1842. have every reason to hope secured for the National Museum.' Minutes of the Trustees Museum; (Appendix to Fellows). This hope was more than realised. It shows the energy of FELLOWS, that the expedition to Lycia of 1841 was his third expedition. In 1846 he made a fourth. It was rich in discovery; but I fear somewhat exhausting to the strength of the explorer. He lived a good many years, it is true, after his return to England; but how easily he yielded when a sudden attack of illness came, I shall have the pain of showing presently. ANOTHER GISTS AND In the interval between his third and fourth journeys to Book III, Lycia, FELLOWS married a fellow-townswoman, Mary, the only daughter of Francis HART, of Nottingham, but she survived the marriage only two years. A year after her death he married the widow of William KNIGHT, of Oatlands, in Herts. On his final return from Lycia he was knighted, as a token (and it was but a slender one) of the public gratitude for his services. At the close of October, 1860, a sudden attack of pleurisy invaded a toilworn frame. On the eighth of the following month he died, at his house in Montagu Place, London, in the sixty-first year of his age. CHARACTER OF THE IN THE GALLERY.' Taken broadly, the sculptures of Lycia may be described DATE AND as works which range, in date, from the sixth century before our Lord to almost as many centuries-if we take the MONUMENTS minor antiquities into account—after the commencement of LYCIAN the Christian era. Some of them rank, therefore, amongst the earliest original monuments of Greek art which the British Museum possesses; and date immediately after the casts of the sculptures of Selinus and of Ægina. On some of the myths and on the habits of Lycian life there has been a sharp controversy, of the merits of which I am very incompetent to speak. Narrower and narrower as my limits are becoming, I yet feel it due to a public benefactor, who can no longer speak for himself otherwise than by his works, that in these waning pages he should be permitted to supply at least a part of his own explanatory comments upon the story of his discoveries. It is one of enchaining interest to the students of classical antiquity. The famous Harpy Tomb,' thinks Sir Charles FELLOWS, is to be enumerated as among the most ancient of the remaining works of the 'Tramila,' or 'Termilæ,' mentioned both BOOK III, GROUP OF EXPLORERS. FELLOWS' OF THE MARBLES. by HERODOTUS and by STEPHEN, of Byzantium, as well as on the Xanthian obelisk or stelè, now called the 'Inscribed Monument,' and numbered 141' in the Lycian Gallery of the Museum. Sir Charles FELLOWS proceeds to say that 'the shaft, frieze, and cap of this monument, weighing more than a hundred tons, has been by an earthquake moved upon its pedestal eighteen inches towards the north-east, throwing to the ground two stones of the frieze towards the south-west: in this state I found it in 1838. In 1841 the eight stones of this frieze were placed in the Museum. The only similar art which I know in Europe is in the Albani Villa near Rome. This slab is described by WINCKELMANN as being of earlier workmanship than that of Etruria. I shall not dwell upon these works, as they were found in situ, and will therefore be as well understood in England as if seen at Xanthus. I may draw attention to the blue, red, and other colours still remaining upon them. The subject also being that of the family of King PANDARUS, it should ever be borne in mind that this monument stood in the metropolis of Lycia, and within twelve miles of the city of Pinara, where we are told that PANDARUS was deified. This and the neighbouring tombs stood there prior to the building of the theatre, which is probably of Greek workmanship. The usual form of this structure must have been partially sacrificed on account of these monuments, as the seats rising in the circles above the diazoma have abruptly ceased on the western side, and have not been continued towards the proscenium. Near to one of the vomitories in the south-eastern bend of the diazoma is a similar monument to the Harpy Tomb, which has had the capstone and bas-reliefs removed, and the shaft built over by the theatre. Upon one of its sides is a short Lycian inscription, and a few words referring to its repair remain BOOK III, upon another side in the Greek character. Chap. IV. ANOTHER ARCHEOLO GISTS AND EXPLORERS. Not far from these stands the inscribed stele, which is of GROUP OF the highest interest; of this, which is too heavy and too much mutilated to allow, without great labour, of its removal to the Museum, I have had casts taken in plaster. From my publications you would learn that a portion of the top of this [monument], weighing several tons, had been split off by the shocks of earthquakes of this I have also had casts taken. In excavating around the monument on the southwest, and in the opposite direction to which the top had split off, I found the capstone had been thrown which had surmounted bas-reliefs; also two fragments of a bas-relief, but I think too high to have been placed upon this stele: they are the work of the same age, and are now placed in the Museum. The most important discovery here was of the upper angles broken from the monument, and having upon them the inscription on each side, thus perfecting, as far as they extend, the beginnings and ends of the upper lines of the inscription; these original stones I have brought home, being useless and insecure, if left in fragments with the monument. The exact form of the letters of the Greek portion of this inscription, compared with many others of which I shall speak, will do much to fix a date to these works. Upon the point of rock on the north-west side of the Acropolis is a fine Cyclopean basement, which has probably been surmounted by a similar monument to those of which I have spoken. No trace is found of any of its fragments; and from its position, shocks in the same direction as those which have destroyed the others would have thrown this down the perpendicular cliff into the river which flows about three hundred feet beneath. |