118 Stonehenge and Us Barrows. 



J. Browne, that the hole into which the upright was to be dropt 

 was prepared with a bed of concrete : " It has been a matter of sur- 

 prise to observant persons, that the now wholly prosti'ate trilithon 

 at Stonehenge should, considering the extreme smallness of its base, 

 ever have stood for ages immemorial. On the 22nd iilt.. Sir Edmund 

 Antrobus' under-gamekeeper, Mr. Eli Vockins, of Seven Barrows, 

 when digging deeply for rabbits, proved that the upright had been 

 embedded in a rough strong concrete, the great quantity and tenacious 

 quality of which fully account for their long and otherwise inex- 

 plicable stability. — Joseph Browne, eye-witness.^'' 



And now that our stone is prepared, and the hole for its reception 

 has deen dug out and lined with concrete, how is it to be raised, and 

 set up in its place? Mr. R. W. Emerson, who visited Stonehenge 

 with Mr. T, Carlyle, could not see much difficulty in handling and 

 carrying stones of this size : " The like is done in all cities, every 

 day, with no other aid than horse-power. I chanced to see a year 

 ago men at work on the substructure of a house, in Bodmin Square, 

 in Boston, swinging a block of granite of the size of the largest of 

 the Stonehenge columns, with an ordinary derrick. The men were 

 common masons, with Paddies to help, nor did they think they were 

 doing anything remarkable. I suppose there were as good men a 

 thousand years ago." ' It is probable that there were as good men a 

 thousand or two thousand years ago, but it is very improbable that 

 the latter had derricks. 



Mr. Hickman, in the twenty-eighth volume of the " Archseologia,'' 

 gives a plate embodying his ideas of the manner in which the up- 

 rights were raised into their positions. He has assumed, however, 

 that the people of that day had ropes. The Rev. Richard Warner, 

 the historian of Bath, in his " Walk through some of the Western 

 counties of England," p. 216, (1800,) says: " What is there in these 

 Celtic temples that should so greatly excite our admiration ? Even 

 in Stonehenge, the most stupendous of them, we see nothing that 

 might not readily be effected by the united efforts of tumultuary 

 numbers. The wondrous stones which compose it would be found 



> " English Traits," 1856. 



