Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/239

Rh sacred precinct of the temple, Mr. Wood sank a great number of trial-holes. Nothing of interest was discovered until the explorer had proceeded about half a mile from the angle first discovered, and then remains of Roman buildings began to be found. Soon he came to a long-line of Roman buildings which must have been the dwellings of the priests and priestesses of Diana. He continued the explorations, searching for a similar range of buildings opposite, but found only one small building—a Roman temple. As this was not the Temple of Diana, he next began a search of the space between the buildings. This was found to be an open space, and the explorer conceived the idea that the temple must be in the rear of it; but in the mean time he found another building, and finally in the very last day of the year 1869 he hit upon the pavement of the temple itself, more than twenty feet underground. The main difficulties of the work were over: it was now a question simply of expense. The pavement was all beautiful marble. It was in two layers: the upper course in white marble, the lower one in cement, making altogether a thickness of two feet. At this stage the village of Ayasalouk was flooded by heavy rains, and the excavations were completely filled up with sand and water. When the water had subsided operations were resumed, and by October, 1870, there had been unearthed half a dozen of the large columns of the temple and fragments of one of the capitals, which had fallen over. One fallen column he traced to its base, and there ascertained that the same base had been employed in supporting columns in the last three temples. First of all we have the stone of the temple which was commenced 500 this was used as the foundation of the column of the last two temples, one rising above the other.

In January, 1871, Mr. Wood bought the land over the temple for 160, and in less than a month afterward found, five feet beneath the surface, 2,600 coins of the fourteenth century, amounting in value to many times the price paid for the land. The British Government, in 1872, made a grant of £5,000 for the prosecution of the work, and another of £6,000 in the following year.

The discoveries on the site of the temple in the season of 1872-'73 comprised two large fragments of the frieze with human figures, life-size, in high relief, and the figure of a stag; the base of one of the inner columns of the peristyle; two sculptured drums of columns; some lions' heads, from the tympanum at the west end of the temple; a large fragment of a cedar beam from the roof, and a number of fragments from the last three temples. Numbers of Arabs came and pitched their tents near the excavations, and all the able-bodied men were employed on the works. The explorer's wife was of great service in caring for the health of these laborers and their families; sometimes she had as many as sixty patients under her care, without any doctor nearer than Smyrna.