Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 3.djvu/55

Rh cromlech should be called the father of all others:—for it is a true giant among pigmies.

The most celebrated cromlech in the island is that of Plas Newydd, of which we have given a view. It is a double cromlech—as about one half of these monuments always are—and is interesting from its fine preservation and highly picturesque position. We are not aware of any excavations having been made beneath it: but there is every appearance, from the formation of the ground, of its having been once sur- rounded by a carn or heap of stones; what the second and smaller cromlech meant in these cases, we do not know; probably it served as the tomb of the wife, or the son, of the deceased chieftain. Rowlands mentions a large carn or mound of stones as not far from this cromlech, but grown over, even in his days, by a luxuriant vegetation of wood. There are so many points of the undulating and richly wooded grounds of the Marquis of Anglesey's seat, corresponding to this description, that we do not know how to fix upon the precise locality, but we have little doubt, from the words of the author of the "Mona Antiqua," that, could this mound be excavated, we should find in it a sepulchral chamber con- structed in the true cromlech fashion. On a farm in this immediate neighbourhood at a spot called Bryn Celli, is a tumulus with a passage opened right through it, this passage descends towards the middle of the mound, and then again mounts to upper air: in the middle we come to a chamber, if it can be so called, which is nothing more nor less than the interior of a cromlech; Gough, in his addition to Camden, gives an account of it, and it is there mentioned as having