“The excavations,” to quote his own words, “prove that the second nation which built a town on this hill, upon the _débris_ of the first settlers (which is from twenty to thirty feet thick), are the Trojans of whom Homer sings.... The strata of this Trojan _débris_, which, without exception, bears marks of great heat, consists mainly of red ashes of wood, and rise from five to ten feet above the great wall of Ilion, the double Scæan gate, and the great surrounding wall, the construction of which Homer ascribes to Poseidon and Apollo, and they show that the town was destroyed by a fearful conflagration. How great this heat must have been is clear also from the large slabs of stone of the road leading from the double Scæan gate down to the plain; for when a few months ago I laid this road open, all the slabs appeared as much uninjured as if they had been put down quite recently; but after they had been exposed to the air for a few days the slabs of the upper part of the road, to the extent of some 10 feet, which had been exposed to the heat, began to crumble away, and have now almost disappeared, while those of the lower portion of the road, which had not been touched by the fire, have remained uninjured, and seem to be indestructible. A further proof of the terrible catastrophe is furnished by a stratum of scoriæ of melted lead and copper of a thickness of from ⅕ of an inch to 1⅕ inch, which extends nearly through the whole hill at a depth of from 27 feet to 29 feet.” It was here that Dr. Schliemann found the prodigious structure he has named the “Tower of Ilion,” a building no less than 40 feet thick. “This tower,” he adds, “after having been buried for thirty-one centuries, and after, during thousands of years, one nation after another had built its houses and palaces high above its summit, has now again been brought to light, and commands a view, if not of the whole plain, at least of its northern parts, and of the Hellespont.” A little way beyond this tower is a remarkably perfect gateway, fitted for two pairs of gates, one behind the other, the upper fastenings of which still remain in the stone posts. These Dr. Schliemann takes for the “Scæan gates” of Homer. He then came to what he calls the “Palace of Priam,” no doubt, a house of some kind, at a depth of from 22 to 26 feet, resting upon the great tower, and directly under the Temple of Minerva. Its walls were built of small stones cemented with earth, and would seem to belong to different epochs. The walls vary in thickness from 4 feet to 1 foot 10 inches. All about, within as well as without, are abundant signs of fire, which must have burnt with prodigious fury. Dr. Schliemann speaks of many feet in thickness of red and yellow wood ashes. Here, as at Nineveh and at Carthage, the first destruction seems to have been fire, the great extent of it, in each case, having probably arisen from the wooden construction of the upper portions of these houses. At Nineveh, it has