So long as Schliemann was eating into the hill, he was happy. His greatest enemies were feast days and rainy days, for in wet weather it was impossible to work, and on feast days the Greeks positively refused to work—a cart-load of money would not win a day’s labour from them. So on these days Schliemann sat down and wrote up his discoveries.
He laid bare great walls, and as his diggers burrowed into the hill they found others immediately below the first, the lower walls buried in soil and rubbish. Schliemann was amazed. The Hill of Hissarlik was the most wonderful hill in the world. All the history of thousands of years was concentrated on this one spot, heaped up there by the hands of men long dead.
The deeper he dug, the more he marvelled. Here was city heaped on city, civilization on civilization. The city of one people had been overwhelmed and covered with debris, then on top of the buried city another people had erected their own dwellings, probably not knowing nor caring what lay under their feet. So it went on here for centuries, for thousands of years, back into the past to the Greeks, to the Trojans, to an earlier race linked with Crete.
By courtesy of the British School at Athens
A GENERAL VIEW OF THE RUINS OF TROY, SHOWING THE REMARKABLE EXTENT OF SCHLIEMANN’S EXCAVATIONS AND DISCOVERIES. THESE ANCIENT TROJAN WALLS WERE COMPLETELY COVERED UNTIL SCHLIEMANN DUG THEM OUT AND LAID BARE THE LONG-LOST SITE OF THE FAMOUS CITY.
The original hill increased in size with the centuries. As the cities were overwhelmed, so the hill grew until in places it was 50 feet higher than the virgin soil on which the first dwellings were founded. As the height increased, so did the length and breadth. Foot by foot the debris of vanished peoples accumulated on the hill, foot by foot the rubbish fell, until in one direction Schliemann found the hill 250 feet longer than it had originally been, while in another place he found that 150 feet had been added!
And in all this mountain of debris Schliemann came across relics, hundreds of them, thousands of them, walls and pieces of pottery and stone battleaxes, with copper nails used by ladies as hair-pins. His industry was astounding. He marked the depth at which everything was found, paid rewards to the finders. If a piece of pottery with an inscription turned up, the man who turned it up received additional pay. The diggers, anxious to make all they could, were more interested in the money than in the work. Some tried to deceive him by scratching inscriptions on bits of pottery. A magnifying glass soon laid the frauds bare, and the finders, instead of getting extra pay, were fined for their deceit. The old diggers soon realized that it was useless to attempt to deceive Schliemann in this way, and new diggers were not long in learning the same lesson.
The hill was like an anthill, men scurrying about with wheelbarrows, men digging away. At times Schliemann had one hundred and fifty labourers at work, with horses and carts. Once his men were striving to lever down a mighty wall of earth which long resisted their utmost efforts. No sooner was it down than another wall collapsed without warning on some of the diggers. Schliemann saw the catastrophe with horror. He rushed down and began to dig with all his strength, while the cries and groans of the buried men fell on his ears. Fortunately the timbers shoring up the work slipped in such a way that they kept the weight off the imprisoned men, who were eventually dug out little the worse for their premature burial.
Not without reason did Homer call Ilium the “windy place,” as Schliemann realized when he experienced to the full the awful blasts that swept over the plain. Sometimes the temperature dropped suddenly and the wind came through their wooden houses and nearly froze them to death. The only way it was possible to keep warm on these occasions was to go into a sheltered trench and work at the face of the hill.