WOOD'S DISCOVERIES AT EPIIESUS. 227 



sacred j^recinct of the temple, Mr. "Wood sank a great number of trial- 

 holes. Nothing of interest was discovered until the explorer had 

 proceeded about half a mile from the angle first discovered, and then 

 remains of Roman buildings began to be found. Soon he came to a long- 

 line of Roman buildings which must have been the dwellings of the 

 priests and priestesses of Diana. He continued the explorations, 

 searching for a similar range of buildings opposite, but found only- 

 one small building a Roman temple. As this was not the Temple of 

 Diana, he next began a search of the space between the buildings. 

 This was found to be an open space, and the exj)lorer conceived tha 

 idea that the temple must bo in the rear of it; but in the mean time 

 he found another building, and finally in the very last day of the year 

 1869 he hit upon the pavement of the temple itself, more than twenty 

 feet underground. The main difficulties of the work were over: it 

 was now a question simply of exi")ense. The pavement was all beau- 

 tiful marble. It was in two layers : the upper course in white mar- 

 ble, the lower one in cement, making altogether a thickness of two 

 feet. At this stage the village of Ayasalouk was flooded by heavy 

 rains, and the excavations were completely filled up with sand and 

 water. Wben the water had subsided operations were resumed, and 

 by October, 1870, there had been unearthed half a dozen of the large 

 columns of the temple and fragments of one of the capitals, which had 

 fallen over. One fallen column he traced to its base, and there ascer- 

 tained that the same base had been employed in supporting columns 

 in the last three temples. First of all we have the stone of the 

 temple which was commenced 500 b. c. ; this was used as the foun- 

 dation of the column of the last two temples, one rising above the 

 other. 



In January, 1871, Mr. Wood bought the land over the temple for 

 160, and in less than a month afterwai'd found, five feet beneath the 

 surface, 2,600 coins of the fourteenth century, amounting in value to 

 many times the price paid for the land. The British Government, in 

 1872, made a grant of 5,000 for the prosecution of the work, and 

 another of 6,000 in the following year. 



The discoveries on the site of the temple in the season of 1872-'73 

 comprised two large fragments of the frieze with human figures, life- 

 size, in high relief, and the figure of a stag ; the base of one of the 

 inner columns of the peristyle; two sculptured drums of columns; 

 some lions' heads, from the tympanum at the west end of the temple ; 

 a large fragment of a cedar beam from the roof, and a number of frag- 

 ments from the last three temples. Numbers of Arabs came and 

 pitched their tents near the excavations, and all the able-bodied men 

 were employed on the works. The explorer's wife was of great ser- 

 vice in caring for the health of these laborers and their families ; some- 

 times she had as many as sixty patients under her care, without any 

 doctor nearer than Smyrna. 



