Now in order to be sure, in every case, of thoroughly solving the Trojan question this year, I am having an immense horizontal platform made on the steep northern slope, which rises at an angle of 40 degrees, a height of 105 feet perpendicular, and 131 feet above the level of the sea. The platform extends through the entire hill, at an exact perpendicular depth of 14 meters or 46½ English feet, it has a breadth of 79 meters or 233 English feet, and embraces my last year’s cutting.[102] M. Laurent calculates the mass of matter to be removed at 78,545 cubic meters (above 100,000 cubic yards): it will be less if I should find the native soil at less than 46 feet, and greater if I should have to make the platform still lower. It is above all things necessary for me to reach the primary soil, in order to make accurate investigations. To make the work easier, after having had the earth on the northern declivity picked down in such a manner that it rises perpendicularly to the height of about 8½ feet from the bottom, and after that at an angle of 50 degrees, I continue to have the _débris_ of the mighty earth wall loosened in such a manner that this angle always remains exactly the same. In this way I certainly work three times more rapidly than before, when, on account of the small breadth of the channel, I was forced to open it on the summit of the hill in a direct horizontal direction along its entire length. In spite of every precaution, however, I am unable to guard my men or myself against the stones which continually come rolling down, when the steep wall is being picked away. Not one of us is without several wounds in his feet.
During the first three days of the excavations, in digging down the slope of the hill, we came upon an immense number of poisonous snakes, and among them a remarkable quantity of the small brown vipers called _antelion_ (Ἀντήλιον), which are scarcely thicker than rain worms, and which have their name from the circumstance that the person bitten by them only survives till sunset. It seems to me that, were it not for the many thousands of storks which destroy the snakes in spring and summer, the Plain of Troy would be uninhabitable, owing to the excessive numbers of these vermin.