Ancient Troy Bayard Taylor. 



By May. Scblicmann had 130 laborers employed, 

 and divided the force, placing a part of the men 

 Under the charge of a 1'arian Greek, named Photidas, 

 who had worked seven years in tho gold mines of 

 Australia, and understood tunneling. The great cut 

 through the plateau was now driven from both ends, 

 but the difficulty and danger arising from the masses 

 of crumbling earth on either side greatly delayed 

 the undertaking. Piiotidas and one of the men 

 were buiied by the slide of a huge mass, but wore 

 fortunately saved by some wooden props and dug out 

 before they were suffocated. The eastern purr, of 

 the plateau belongs to an Englishman, Mr. Calvert, 

 who has a largo farm on the site of the ancient 

 Thymbria, and Schliemann made an agreement with 

 him to sink another excavation on the eastern side 

 of the great cut. At the very beginning of this new 

 work a Doric tri glyph was discovered, with a bas- 

 relief nearly a yard square in the interspace, repre- 

 senting the Sun-God driving his four-horse chariot. 

 This piece of art, certainly of the ago of Lysimachus, 

 is purely Greek, and therefore purely beautiful. The 

 horses resemble those on the frieze of the Athenian 

 Parthenon. 



Having reached the original soil on the northern 

 side of the mound, Schliemann determined to run an 

 oblique ditch, 150 feet wide at the top, and half that 

 breadth at the bottom, to intersect the main cut. 

 Jn proportion as he advanced, he was struck with 

 the fact that the remains of massive cut-stone 

 houses, copper weapons, vases of elegant form and 

 rare and curious symbolical figures ceased suddenly, 

 at the depth of about 33 feet ; while, below that 

 depth, to the primeval, undisturbed earth, at 45 

 to 48 feet, a new and apparently much older class of 

 relies was found. The same result had been attained, 

 the previous year, in the spots where a greater than 

 the average depth had been reached ; so, now, iu- 

 etead of breaking up these ancient walls and re- 

 moving them, the explorer decided to ascertain 

 their extent and character. By the end of July a 

 wall six feet thick and nine feet high was discov- 

 ered, at a depth of 43 feet, on the northern side of 

 the plateau, and a tower, 40 feet in diameter, based 

 on the bad-rock, on the southern. Twenty feet of 

 the tower were still remaining, and the mass -of 

 loose blocks scattered around it indicated a much 

 greater original bight. Inasmuch as both these 

 massive ruins, on opposite sides of the in mid, evi- 

 dently belonged to the same period, and to the walls 

 of houses occupying a plane connecting them, it was 

 clear that an important city, inhabited by a highly 

 civilized people, stood not upon the original soil, 

 but upon the rubbish of a still earlier settlement, 

 whose remains were 14 or 15 feet in depth below 

 it. It was only by degrees, however, that Schlie- 

 mann convinced himself that the masonry be- 

 longed to the Troy of Homer, which, itself, must 

 have arisen upon the ruins of some pre-historic 

 capital, of whose people we can only say that they 

 belonged to the Aryan race. 



Until the 14th of August, a period of four months 

 and a half, the woik was patiently driven forward. 

 Then fever broke out among the workmen, the over- 



seers were taken down, and the aspects became so 

 unfavorable that Schliemann reluctantly stopped 

 work for the year and returned to Athens. lie first, 

 however, laid bare enough of the tower to find that 

 it was connected with strong walla on both sides; 

 here, moreover, two copper lances were discovered. 

 The number of articles, great and small, unearthed 

 since the beginning of the enterprise, already 

 amounted to more than 100,000! The evidence of 

 successive historic periods was now clear, the chaos 

 of fragments began to speak with an intelligible 

 voice and language, but the name of ILIUM was not 

 yet so distinctly written that the modern world 

 must perforce read it. 



EXCAVATIONS IN 1873. 



By the 1st of February, 1873. the work was asaiu 

 resumed, but little was done before the 1st of March, 

 when the weather became fine, the Greek holidays 

 were less frequent, and the workiogmen, to tho 

 number of 158, were gathered together. Alter clear- 

 ing away the Avashings of the Winter rains, Schlie- 

 mauu followed the wall on the northern side of the 

 plateau until he reached a part which was strongly 

 buttressed. This, and other indications led him to 

 believe that he had found the site of the Trojan 

 temple of Minerva. Further excavations seemed to 

 confirm this view; they laid bare the foundations of a 

 building 280 by 70 feet in dimensions, formed of huge 

 uuscnlptured blocks, and nowhere more than six 

 feet high. The earth above it, however, was filled 

 with an immense mass of sculptured fragments. 



It is impossible, within the space at my command, 

 to describe the various objects discovered from day 

 to day. Schliemann's previous experience had, by 

 this time, enlightened him as to the proper direction 

 of his labors, andhe sought to strike upon something 

 which would serve as an indisputable landmark. 

 The accumulation of terra-cotta disks, vases, idols, 

 stone weapons, copper knives, needles, household 

 utensils, with an occasional gold or silver ornament, 

 continued; but the collection was already great 

 enough for archaeological purposes. The high tower, 

 the connecting walls, the foundation of the temple, 

 and the remains of houses covering the same stratum 

 of ruin upon which the former stood, promised more 

 important results. With this view ho made various 

 detached cuttings at the edges of the plateau, carry- 

 ing them down to the level of what ho was now con- 

 vinced was Trojan rnasonary. 



In tho beginning of April, at a depth of 27 feet, a 

 house of eight rooms, adjoining the great tower, was 

 discovered. The walls were about four feet thick, 

 in some places 10 feet high, showed traces of a coat- 

 ing of lime or stucco on the inside, and were, in many 

 places, calcined and blackened by fire. In some of 

 the rooms were earthen jars, for wine or other stores, 

 between seven and eight feet high, and in front of 

 the house a stone altar, for offerings, of a rude, prim- 

 itive form. A little further there w:-s a great mass 

 of human bones, among them two entire skeletons 

 wearing copper helmets, within which the skulla 

 were well preserved. To the explorer's Homeno 

 enthusiasm nothing more could be added: ruin, con- 



