A very large ancient building was found standing upon the wall or buttress. At this place the wall appears to be about seventy-nine feet wide, or thick. The site of this building, upon an elevation, together with its solid structure, leave no doubt that it was the grandest building in Troy; nay, that it must have been the Palace of Priam. This edifice, now first laid open from beneath the ashes which covered it in the burning of the city, was found by Dr. Schliemann in the very state to which, in Homer, Agamemnon threatens to reduce it: "The house of Priam _blackened with fire_." Upon this house, by the side of the double gate, upon Ilium's Great Tower, at the edge of the western slope of the Acropolis, sat Priam, the seven elders of the city, and Helen; and this is the scene of the most splendid passage in the Iliad: "Attending there on aged Priam, sat The Elders of the city; ... All these were gathered at the Scæan Gates. ... so on Ilion's Tower Sat the sage chiefs and counselors of Troy. Helen they saw, as to the Tower she came." From this spot the company surveyed the whole plain, and saw at the foot of the Acropolis the Trojan and the Achæan armies face to face, about to settle their agreement to let the war be decided by a single combat between Paris and Menelaus. "Upon _Seamander's flowery mead_ they stood Unnumbered as _the vernal leaves and flowers_." The description which Homer gives of the Tower of Ilium, and the incidents connected with it, corresponds so closely to the tower which Dr. Schliemann found that it leaves no doubt that the two are identical. [Illustration: WONDERFUL VASES OF TERRA-COTTA. (_From the Palace of Priam, at 24-1/4 feet._)] "Now, with regard to the objects found in these houses, I must first of all mention having discovered, at a depth of twenty-six feet, in the Palace of Priam, a splendid and brilliant brown vase, twenty-four and one-fourth inches high, with a figure of the tutelar goddess of Troy, that is, with her owl's head, two breasts, a splendid necklace, indicated by an engraved pattern, a very broad and beautifully engraved girdle, and other very artistic decorations; there are no arms, nor are there any indications of them. Unfortunately this exquisite vase has suffered from the weight of stones which lay upon it. No. 4 resembles an owl's beak, and especially as this is seen between the ear-shaped ornaments, it was doubtless intended to represent the image of the owl with upraised wings on each side of the vases, which image received a noble appearance from the splendid lid with a coronet. I give a drawing of the largest vase of this type, which was found a few days ago in the royal palace at a depth of from twenty-eight to twenty-nine and one-half feet; on the top of it I have placed the bell-shaped lid with a coronet, which was discovered close by and appears to have belonged to it. [Illustration: FROM PALACE OF PRIAM.]