Page:Troja by Heinrich Schliemann.djvu/75

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1882.]
EXPLORATION OF THE PLATEAU.
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shafts (see E, F, I, and in the vignette on Plan II.) I struck large walls; in four more I struck house-walls, in building all of which walls the rock must necessarily have been cleared of the ancient débris with which it had been covered. Therefore, fifteen out of twenty shafts had given no result at all.

I now therefore wished to explore the plateau systematically and thoroughly, and I began this work by digging on the south-western slope of Hissarlik, close to the shafts marked K, I, G on Plan II. in Ilios, at right angles to the axis of the south-western gate (FM—TU on Plan VII.) a trench 60 mètres long by 3 mètres broad (see Plan VIII. in this volume). Besides investigating the soil, I hoped to bring to light the prolongation of the south-western gateway, and to find tombs on both sides of it. As the slope rises here at an angle of 15°, I thought that the accumulation of débris would be rather insignificant, and I hoped, therefore, to obtain great results from this excavation. But I was greatly disappointed, for I only struck the rock at 12 mètres below the surface, and whoever has seen excavations will know that to search for tombs at such a depth is altogether out of the question, the difficulties of removing the débris from narrow trenches being too enormous. As I found there no trace of the southwestern gate-road, we must suppose that this road—just as I found to be the case with the southern gate-road (N F on Plan VII.)—lay upon the bare rock. I found in this trench very large quantities of fragments of Hellenic pottery, and in the lowest layers masses of fragments of those kinds of very ancient pottery which are peculiar to the two most ancient cities of Hissarlik; namely the thick lustrous black pottery peculiar to the first city, with an incised ornamentation filled with chalk, having long horizontal tubes in the rim, or two vertical tubular holes for suspension in the body; and the dark-red, brown, or yellow tripod vases, and fragments of thick, perfectly flat, lustrous red terra-

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