And in all this mountain of debris Schliemann came across relics, hundreds of them, thousands of them, walls and pieces of pottery and stone battleaxes, with copper nails used by ladies as hair-pins. His industry was astounding. He marked the depth at which everything was found, paid rewards to the finders. If a piece of pottery with an inscription turned up, the man who turned it up received additional pay. The diggers, anxious to make all they could, were more interested in the money than in the work. Some tried to deceive him by scratching inscriptions on bits of pottery. A magnifying glass soon laid the frauds bare, and the finders, instead of getting extra pay, were fined for their deceit. The old diggers soon realized that it was useless to attempt to deceive Schliemann in this way, and new diggers were not long in learning the same lesson. The hill was like an anthill, men scurrying about with wheelbarrows, men digging away. At times Schliemann had one hundred and fifty labourers at work, with horses and carts. Once his men were striving to lever down a mighty wall of earth which long resisted their utmost efforts. No sooner was it down than another wall collapsed without warning on some of the diggers. Schliemann saw the catastrophe with horror. He rushed down and began to dig with all his strength, while the cries and groans of the buried men fell on his ears. Fortunately the timbers shoring up the work slipped in such a way that they kept the weight off the imprisoned men, who were eventually dug out little the worse for their premature burial. Not without reason did Homer call Ilium the “windy place,” as Schliemann realized when he experienced to the full the awful blasts that swept over the plain. Sometimes the temperature dropped suddenly and the wind came through their wooden houses and nearly froze them to death. The only way it was possible to keep warm on these occasions was to go into a sheltered trench and work at the face of the hill. Hundreds of thousands of tons of debris were shifted in driving a great road like a railway cutting with huge sloping embankments through the hill. In one trench Schliemann fought his way through two walls 10 feet thick, and in a little while came to two more walls 6 and 8 feet thick. Mighty blocks of stone had to be wrenched out and broken up before they could be carted away. The Greeks, coveting this stone for building purposes, quickly carted it away, but they were too indolent to assist Schliemann in breaking it up.