thenian lady, who
is an enthusiastic admirer of Homer, and knows almost the whole of the
Iliad by heart, is present at the excavations from morning to night. All
of my workmen are Greeks from the neighbouring village of Renkoi; only
on Sunday, a day on which the Greeks do not work, I employ Turks.

_Hissarlik, October_ 26, 1871. Since my report of the 18th I have
continued the excavations with the utmost energy, with, on the average,
80 workmen, and I have to-day reached an average depth of 13 feet. I
found an immense number of round articles of terra-cotta, red, yellow,
grey, and black, with two holes, without inscriptions, but frequently
with a kind of potter's stamp upon them. I cannot find any trace of
their having been used for domestic purposes, and therefore I presume
they have served as _ex votos_ for hanging up in the temples.

I found at a depth of about five feet three marble slabs with
inscriptions. One of these must, I think, from the character of the
writing, be assigned to the third century, the two others to the first
century B.C. A king spoken of in the third century writing must have
been one of the kings of Pergamus.

The view from the hill of Hissarlik is magnificent. Before me lies the
glorious Plain of Troy, traversed from the south-east to the north-west
by the Scamander, which has changed its bed since ancient times.

_Hissarlik, November_ 18, 1871. I have now reached a depth of 33 feet.
During these operations I was for a time deceived by the enormous mass
of stone implements which were dug up, and by the absence of any trace
of metal, and supposed that I had come upon the Stone Age. But since the
sixth of this month there have appeared many nails, knives, lances, and
battle-axes of copper of such elegant workmanship that they can have
been made only by a civilised people. I cannot even admit that I have
reached the Bronze Period, for the implements and weapons which I find
are too well finished.

I must, however, observe that the deeper I dig the greater are the
indications of a higher civilisation. And as I thus find ever more and
more traces of civilisation the deeper I dig, I am now perfectly
convinced that I have not yet penetrated to the period of the Trojan
war, and hence I am more hopeful than ever of finding the site of Troy
by further excavations; for if ever there was a Troy--and my belief in
this is firm--it can only have been here, on the site of Ilium.

_II.--Trojan Life an