More thoughts on the Kalifatli Asmak

The following can be found in Heinrich Schliemann, Ilios, the City and Country of the Trojans, 1880

In the following passage, Schliemann cites another source describing the river he calls Thymbrius but we call the Kimar Su today.

M. Burnouf makes the following remarks upon the river :—“ The Thymbrius flows in the hollow of a valley between the hills of Akshi Kioi and the heights to the south. It is about 30 ft. broad. Its banks are steep; it is perfectly limpid, and is overshadowed by large trees. Its banks, which are from 10 to 12 ft. high, show two very distinct layers : first, a modern alluvium, consisting of earth washed down by the rains from the hills; secondly, below this, a thick layer of plastic clay, analogous to that which forms the soil of the plain of the Scamander. The confluence of the Thymbrius and the Scamander is not difficult to determine, since the banks are high.  During the inundations, the great polygon formed by the Thymbrius, the Scamander, and the hills to the east, becomes covered with water, which runs with great impetuosity in an easterly direction ; inundates the swamp (now rendered salubrious) to the north of Akshi Kioi; pours into the large bed of the Kalifatli Asmak, which is identical with the ancient bed of the Scamander; and forms other streams, which flow in the same direction. On the 18th of May, 1879, we saw this whole plain covered with dead trees and branches, which had been carried away in the same direction, and caught by the bushes of the agnus-cactus and tamarisk.” (Ilion pp 77-8)

Burnouf is saying that the top of the plain, where the Scamander and the Kimar meet actually flows toward and through the swamp and into the Kalifatli Asmak during floods. 

The polygon Burnouf has in mind is the area indicated with blue lines.  The water coming from the confluence of the Kimar and the Karamendere does not flow "eastward" as Burnouf says, but rather to the north. Burnouf also locates the swamp north of Akshi Kioi, but it is actually west of there. Both confusions are easy to understand if Burnouf is thinking that down-plain, toward the sea is north.  The plain is actually going NW here.  

Nonetheless, he does tell us that the uppermost part of the plain drains toward the Kalifatli Asmak during flooding events.  

The following passage is from Dr. Rudolf Vinchow's appendix on "Medical Practice in the Troad in 1879". 

The Trojan Plain is a notorious region of fever, nor can any one be astonished at this. Large swamps and marshes extend in all directions. Several rivers and rivulets disappear in them and fill the subsoil with their water. Shortly before my arrival, the Scamander had overflowed its banks and had inundated the plain far and wide. In the first week of April the whole land on its west side was still coated with thick silt and mud; all the roads were covered up, and stagnant water still stood in many places. Then the evaporation commenced, and in the evening a stinking fog lay over the plain. The various arms of the Kalifatli Asmak began soon afterwards to change from flowing watercourses into chains of stagnant pools and tanks. In short, all the conditions were supplied for the formation of malaria, for at the same time the temperature of the air increased rapidly, and at noon we had not seldom in the shade 20°, 22°, and even higher degrees centigrade [68°-71 F].  (Ilion, p 723) 

I just want to point out that it was the west side of the plain that had standing water and was still coated in silt and mud.  On the east side of the plain, the Kalifatli Asmak was flowing until it stopped.  

Perhaps the reason that the east side of the plain was not coated in silt and mud is that the Kalifatli Asmak could successfully drain that side of the plain in the 1870s.