196 



first proceeded.* It is not mentioned whether these towers were 

 round or square ; and it is to be observed that they were all situated 

 in villages, not at places of worship : had the Irish towers been 

 intended for gathering the septs, they would probably have been 

 still more numerous than there are any traces of, and they would 

 have continued to have been employed for that purpose as long as 

 warlike habits existed, at least until the time when Giraldus 

 Cambrensis visited Ireland. 



Kondemir, who travelled in 1490 as Embassador from Khorasan 

 to China, relates that between the city of Sac-chu on the borders 

 of China, and that of Khanbalic, where the emperor resided, there 

 were ninety-nine towers, and at each town a tower called Yam ; 

 between eacli of these yams, and about a farsang, or three and a 

 half English miles asunder, there were other towers called Furghu, 

 sixty guz,-f- or about an hundred and ten feet in height ; in these 

 centinels kept continual watch, and upon alarm kindled a fire, 

 which was immediately answered by the next Furghu, and so on ; 

 in this manner intelligence was conveyed to the capital in twenty- 

 four hours, although distant three months journey.^ At first sight 

 these Furghu seem to furnish a case strongly in point ; yet it can 

 hardly be thought that the purpose was similar, when it is recol- 

 lected that very few of our towers are within sight of one another, 

 and that even if they were, the fire could not have been lighted on 

 the top of the cone-shaped roof; and that supposing it to have been 

 placed in the upper story, it would have made but a poor appear- 

 ance as a beacon fire, glimmering from the small windows. Be- 

 sides there were some towers without windows, in which case tlie 



* Elphinstone's Travels into Caubul. Quarto Edit. p. iS*. 

 ■)- A guz is something less than two English feet. 

 X Asiatic Annual Register for 1800, p. 236. 



