_Hissarlik, Plain of Troy, October_ 18, 1871. In my work, "Ithaca, the
Peloponnesus, and Troy," published in 1869, I endeavored to prove, both
by my own excavations and by the statement of the Iliad, that the
Homeric Troy cannot possibly have been situated on the heights of
Bunarbashi, to which place most archaeologists assign it. At the same
time I endeavoured to explain that the site of Troy must necessarily be
identical with the site of that town which, throughout all antiquity and
down to its Complete destruction at the end of the eighth or beginning
of the ninth century A.D., was called Ilium, and not until 1,000 years,
after its disappearance--that is, in 1788 A.D.--was christened Ilium
Novum by Lechevalier, who, as his work proves, can never have visited
his Ilium Novum.

The site of Ilium is on a plateau 80 feet above the plain. Its
north-western corner is formed by a hill about 26 feet higher still,
which is about 705 feet in breadth and about 984 feet in length, and
from its imposing situation and natural fortifications, this hill of
Hissarlik seems specially suited to the acropolis of the town. Ever
since my first visit I never doubted that I should find the Pergamus of
Priam in the depths of this hill.

On October 10, 1871, I started with my wife from the Dardanelles for the
Plain of Troy, a journey of eight hours, and next day commenced my
excavations where I had, a year previously, made some preliminary
explorations, and had found, among other things, at a depth of 16 feet,
walls about 6-1/2 feet thick, which belong to a bastion of the time of
Lysimachus.

Hissarlik, the Turkish name of this imposing hill at the north-western
end of the site of Ilium, means "fortress," or "acropolis," and seems to
prove that this is the Pergamus of Priam; that here Xerxes in 480 B.C.
offered up 1,000 oxen to the Ilian Athena; that here Alexander the Great
hung up his armour in the temple of the goddess, and took away in its
stead some of the weapons therein dedicated, belonging to the time of
the Trojan war.

I conjectured that this temple, the pride of the Ilians, must have stood
on the highest point of the hill, and I therefore decided to excavate
this locality down to the native soil, and I made an immense cutting on
the face of the steep northern slope, about 66 feet from my last year's
work. Notwithstanding the difficulties due to coming on immense blocks
of stone, the work advances rapidly. My dear wife, an A