126 Stonehenge and its Barrows. 



stretching up my riding stick at arm's length could just manage to 

 touch and push it, but it did not stir. Meanwhile the respective 

 heights of camel, rider, and stick taken together would place the 

 stone in question full fifteen feet from the ground. These blocks 

 seem by their quality, to have been hewn from the neighbouring 

 limestone cliff, and roughly shaped, but present no further trace of 

 art, no groove or cavity of sacrificial import, much less anything in- 

 tended for figure or ornament. The people of the country attribute 

 their erection to Darim, and by his own hands, too, seeing that he 

 was a giant ; also for some magical ceremony, since he was a 

 magician. Pointing towards Rass, our companions affirmed that a 

 second and similar stone circle, also of gigantic dimensions, existed 

 there, and lastly they mentioned a third towards the south-west. 

 That the object of these strange constructions was in some measure 

 religions, seems to me hardly doubtful; and if the learned conjectures 

 that would discover a planetary symbolism in Stonehenge and Carnae 

 have any real foundation, this Arabian monument, erected in the 

 land where the heavenly bodies are known to have been once ven- 

 erated by the inhabitants, may make a like claim ; in fact, there is 

 little difference between the stone wonder of Kaseem and that of 

 "Wiltshire, except that the one is in Arabia, the other, the more 

 perfect, in England." ^ 



Dr. Thurnam, in his " Historical Ethnology of Britain " (chap. 

 V. of the introduction to the " Crania Britannica ") says ; " Various 

 British coins exhibit symbols of stars, crescents, and suns, which 

 may refer to the ancient astral and elemental worship,^' and refers 



' Narrative of a year's journey through Central and Eastern Arabia, 1862— 

 63, by William Gifford Palgrave, vol. 1., p. 250, 1865. Sir J. Lubbock, re- 

 ferring to Bonstettin, Sur les Dolmens, p. 27, sayg, " that Kohen, a Jesuit 

 Missionary, has recently discovered in Arabia, near Khabb, in the district of 

 Kasim, three large stone circles, described as being extremely like Stonehenge, 

 and consisting of very lofty triliths." — p. 122, second edition. Dr. Thurnam 

 has a memorandum to the following effect, from Selden " de Dis Syris, 

 Syntagma ii., c. xv, , acervus Mercurii, &c." Selden is quoting several Jewish 

 and Talmudic writers, one of them saying: " Lapides fani Merkolis sic dis- 

 positi erant, ut unus hinc, alter illinc, tertius super utrumque collocaretur ; " 

 and that " Merkolis, binis lapidibus, sibi mutuo adjacentibus, tertius lapis 

 imponebatur." 



