Page:Troy-and-its-remains by Heinrich Schliemann.djvu/149

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CHAPTER IV.
  • Another passage from the Stone Age to copper implements mixed with stone
  • The signs of a higher civilization increase with the depth reached
  • All the implements are of better workmanship
  • Discovery of supposed inscriptions
  • Further discussion of the use of the whorls
  • Troy still to be reached
  • Fine terra-cotta vessels of remarkable forms
  • Great numbers of stone weights and hand mill-stones
  • Numerous house-walls
  • Construction of the great cutting
  • Fever and quinine
  • Wounds and arnica.

On the Hill of Hissarlik, November 18th, 1871.

Since my report of the 3rd of this month I have continued my excavations with the greatest zeal, and although interrupted sometimes by the rain, and sometimes by Greek festivals, and also in spite of the continually increasing difficulty in removing the rubbish, I have now reached an average depth of 10 meters or about 33 English feet.[1] Much that was inexplicable to me has now become clear, and I must first of all correct an error made in my last report, that I had come upon the stone period. I was deceived by the enormous mass of stone implements of all kinds which were daily dug up, and by the absence of any trace of metal, except two copper nails, which I believed to have come in some way from one of the upper strata into the deeper stratum of the stone period. But since the 6th of this month there have

  1. ↑ This depth of 10 meters, or 33 feet, is that which Dr. Schliemann came to regard as the lower limit of the ruins of the true heroic Troy. The depth of 7 meters, or 23 feet, presently mentioned is the upper limit of the same stratum. (See the Introduction and the later Memoirs.)—[Ed.]
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