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His long experience as an excavator recalled to him a somewhat analogous case. In addition, the desire of earning the thousand guineas of his lordship spurred up his faculties.
All antiquities found in excavation belong to the Government; only duplicates, and objects not required by the Museum, are given to the excavator. The Government has the right to expropriate land for the purpose of excavations. The Museum Committee may acquire the interests of any private person in an antiquity on payment of compensation.
Nevertheless it will do the work of from 75 to 100 men, since its capacity is from 800 to 1,000 cubic yards per day, the amount of rock uncovered depending, of course, upon the depth of earth overlying it. The excavator will dump 30 feet from the center line of the car, and 26 feet above the track, which is laid on the rock. Total weight about fifty tons.
Schliemann when he explored Troy. Like Dr. Schliemann he was no erudite savant, but an enthusiast with an eye for likely sites. Like Dr. Schliemann, he has had to take "the consequences of being found in such a situation." It must be added that, again like Dr. Schliemann he was not an excavator of trained experience.
Damage to ancient monuments is punished by fine or imprisonment or both. Unauthorized excavation, even on land belonging to the excavator, and the purchasing of objects illegally excavated, are punished by fine or imprisonment or both. Application for leave to excavate must be made to the Chief Secretary for Government.
Francois Lenormant, whose delightful book, La Grande Grece, was my companion on this journey, believed that a discovery far more wonderful and important than that of Pompeii awaits the excavator on this site; he held it certain that here, beneath some fifteen feet of alluvial mud, lay the temples and the streets of Sybaris, as on the day when Crathis first flowed over them.
So far, no trace of burglars, either ancient or modern, had been discovered. Not infrequently the finding of an Arab copper coin, or some disk made of modern metal, an amulet similar to those worn by the ancients, but made of a composition unknown to them, will indicate to an excavator that the tomb has been visited, and probably violated, by modern thieves.
At either landing-place huge substructures stretch away beneath the waves, the relics of moles, of arsenals, and of docks; a network of roads may still be traced which linked together the ruins of Imperial villas; every garden is watered from Roman cisterns; dig where he will, the excavator is rewarded by the discovery of vases, of urns, of fragments of sculpture, of mosaic pavements, of precious marbles.
The ground lies strewn with fragments of Himyaritic inscriptions, pottery, and other indications of a rich harvest for the excavator, but the hostility of the Nahad tribe prevented us from paying these ruins more than a cursory visit, and even to secure this we had to pay the sheikh of the place nineteen dollars, and his greeting was ominous as he angrily muttered, 'Salaam to all who believe Mohammed is the true prophet.
Whatever measure of water is drunk from one's tank and whatever measure is taken therefrom by others for purposes of bathing, all become stored for the benefit of the excavator of the tank and he enjoys the same for unending days in the next world. Water, especially in the other world, is difficult to obtain, O son. A gift of drink produces eternal happiness. Make gifts of sesame here.
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