1770. ROUND THE WORLD. 271 



that of a Welchman, is a long pedigree of respectable 

 ancestors, and indeed a veneration for antiquity 

 seems to be carried farther here than in any other 

 country : even a house that has been well inhabited 

 for many generations, becomes almost sacred, and 

 few articles either of use or luxury bear so high a 

 price as stones, which having been long sat upon, 

 are become even and smooth : those who can pur- 

 chase such stones, or are possessed of them by in- 

 heritance, place them round their houses, where they 

 serve as seats for their dependants. 



Every raja sets up in the principal town of his 

 province, or nigree, a large stone, which serves as 

 a memorial of his reign. In the principal town of 

 Seba, where we lay, there are thirteen such stones, 

 besides many fragments of others, which had been 

 set up in earlier times, and are now mouldering 

 away : these monuments seem to prove that some 

 kind of civil establishment here is of considerable an- 

 tiquity. The last thirteen reigns in England make 

 something more than 276 years. 



Many of these stones are so large, that it is diffi- 

 cult to conceive by what means they were brought to 

 their present station, especially as it is the summit of 

 a hill ; but the world is full of memorials of human 

 strength, in which the mechanical powers that have 

 been since added by mathematical science, seem to 

 be surpassed ; and of such monuments there are not 

 a few among the remains of barbarous antiquity in 

 our own country, besides those upon Salisbury plain. 



These stones not only record the reigns of succes- 

 sive princes, but serve for a purpose much more ex- 

 traordinary, and probably altogether peculiar to this 

 country. When a raja dies, a general feast is pro- 

 claimed throughout his dominions, and all his sub- 

 jects assemble round these stones : almost every living 

 creature that can be caught is then killed, and the 

 feast lasts for a less or greater number of weeks or 

 months, as the kingdom happens to be more or less 



