Page:Rude Stone Monuments.djvu/476

450 and round graves, with four angle-stones, like the preceding one (woodcut No. 195).

It may not be satisfactory to be obliged to go back to a traveller of the thirteenth century, however much he may be confirmed by subsequent writers, for an account of monuments which we would like to see measured and drawn with modern accuracy. It is, on the other hand, however, a gain to find a trustworthy witness who lived among a people who buried their dead in tumuli and sacrificed horses in their honour, and provided them with meat and drink for their journey to the Shades; who, in fact, in the thirteenth century were enacting those things as living men which we find only in a fossil state in more Western lands.

The general appearance of these tumuli may be judged of by one of the most magnificent recently excavated by the Russians near Alexandropol, between the Dnieper and the Bazaolouk. It is about 1000 feet in circumference and 70 feet high, and was originally surmounted by a "Baba," which, however, is not there now. Around its base was a sort of retaining wall of small stones, and outside these a ditch and low mound, but no attempt whatever at lithic magnificence. Within it were several sepulchres. The principal one in the centre had apparently been already rifled, but in the subsidiary ones great quantities of gold ornaments were found, especially on the trappings of the horses which