When, at the time of writing my last report, I saw stone implements and weapons brought to light, and none but stone, and was forced to believe that I had penetrated into the stratum of the people belonging to the stone period, I really began to fear that the actual object of my excavations, to find here the Pergamus of Priam, had failed; that I had already reached a period long anterior to the Trojan war, and that the colossal sepulchral mounds in the Plain of Troy were perhaps thousands of years older than the deeds of Achilles. But as I find ever more and more traces of civilization 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 there ever was a Troy—and my belief in this is firm—it can only have been here, on the site of Ilium. I think that my excavations of 1868 on the heights of Bunarbashi have proved the impossibility of a city or even a village ever having stood there, except at the extreme end of Balidagh, where Consul Hahn has made excavations, but where, owing to the small space, which is limited by precipices, there can only have been a small town of 2000 inhabitants at most. Upon the site of the Ἰλιέων κώμη, which place was regarded as the site of ancient Troy by Strabo—who had never visited the Plain of Troy—in accordance with the theory of Demetrius of Scepsis, which I discussed in my report of the 26th of last month—I have, since Tuesday the 21st, employed ten workmen to lay bare a portion of the surrounding wall which seems to be indicated by a low but long rise of the ground. I do this, however, simply in the interest of science, and I am far from fancying that I shall find Troy there.
