Page:Surrey Archaeological Collections Volume 1.djvu/98

 vol. ii. p. 57, has figured examples, in three groups, of the Umbrella stones, exhibiting the forms of full cromlechs, or rather of trigliths, with converging jambs; and Chardin, in his "Persian Travels," p. 371, mentions a remarkable one in that country. "Upon the left-hand side of the road are to be seen large circles of hewn stone" (I suppose he here means only hewn or dug from the quarry, not squared), "which the Persians affirm to be a great sign that the Chaous, making war in India, held a council in that place; it being the custom of these people that every officer that comes to the council brought with him a stone, to serve him as a chair. These Chaous were a sort of giant. What is most to be admired is, that the stones were so big that eight men can hardly move one; and yet there is no place from whence they can be imagined to have been fetched, but from the nearest mountain, six leagues off." Passing on towards Europe, we have in Strahlenberg's "Travels," p. 367, the pyramidical mausoleum of the Tartarian kings at Abakan, with four stones at its corners; and the obelisk near Tombskoi (plate 5 A), to the best of Strahlenberg's recollection, about a foot thick, two feet broad, and sixteen feet high. Still nearer Europe, in Bell's "Travels in Circassia" (London, 1840), is the view of an ancient tomb in the valley of Ishat. In all this line, from beyond the Indus to the Don, we are only tracing the steps which Odin (perhaps merely a personification of civilization or humanity) is said to have taken in his migration from east to west. Snorro Sturleson, in his "Heimskringla und Ynglinga Saga," describes this journey, particularly from Asoph, more minutely than I will here transcribe; but this traditional leading of the people by Odin will give one, and perhaps the strongest