Schliemann’s energy was remarkable, his driving force irresistible. From dawn till dark he was on the site. His wife, a Greek lady, was as enthusiastic as her husband, so enthusiastic, indeed, that she and her maid took picks and spades and dug trenches and made discoveries for themselves. So long as Schliemann was eating into the hill, he was happy. His greatest enemies were feast days and rainy days, for in wet weather it was impossible to work, and on feast days the Greeks positively refused to work—a cart-load of money would not win a day’s labour from them. So on these days Schliemann sat down and wrote up his discoveries. He laid bare great walls, and as his diggers burrowed into the hill they found others immediately below the first, the lower walls buried in soil and rubbish. Schliemann was amazed. The Hill of Hissarlik was the most wonderful hill in the world. All the history of thousands of years was concentrated on this one spot, heaped up there by the hands of men long dead. The deeper he dug, the more he marvelled. Here was city heaped on city, civilization on civilization. The city of one people had been overwhelmed and covered with debris, then on top of the buried city another people had erected their own dwellings, probably not knowing nor caring what lay under their feet. So it went on here for centuries, for thousands of years, back into the past to the Greeks, to the Trojans, to an earlier race linked with Crete. [Illustration: _By courtesy of the British School at Athens_ A GENERAL VIEW OF THE RUINS OF TROY, SHOWING THE REMARKABLE EXTENT OF SCHLIEMANN’S EXCAVATIONS AND DISCOVERIES. THESE ANCIENT TROJAN WALLS WERE COMPLETELY COVERED UNTIL SCHLIEMANN DUG THEM OUT AND LAID BARE THE LONG-LOST SITE OF THE FAMOUS CITY.] The original hill increased in size with the centuries. As the cities were overwhelmed, so the hill grew until in places it was 50 feet higher than the virgin soil on which the first dwellings were founded. As the height increased, so did the length and breadth. Foot by foot the debris of vanished peoples accumulated on the hill, foot by foot the rubbish fell, until in one direction Schliemann found the hill 250 feet longer than it had originally been, while in another place he found that 150 feet had been added!