226 Stonehenge and its Barrows. 



plains around Avebury and Stonehenge^ the sacred places of an 

 elder race/'' — Dr. Thurnamj " Archaeolog-ia/'' vol. xliii., p. 287.^ 



The Belgic Ditches, 



as described by Dr. T. Wharton^ in his " History of Kiddington/' pp. 



72, 73, 74. [1815.] 



(Page 103.; 



" Petty barbarian states, intent only on repelling their neighbours 

 or enlarging their territories, unfurnished with arts or letters, and 

 from their natural ferocity cherishing the most violent jealousies, 

 and destitute of the principles o£ mutual confidence, possessed no 

 other mode of adj usting their differences and securing their frontiers, 

 than to construct these inartificial bulwarks, serving at once for 

 division and defence, planned on the simplest mechanism, and ex- 

 ecuted by the mere strength of tumultuary multitudes. 



'* They must be esteemed stupendous operations, not only if we 

 consider their solidity and extent, but the inconveniencies of ground, 

 and impracticabilities of country, over which they were conducted, 

 with a sort of blind but unbaffled perseverance, by the devious and 

 eccentric hand of savage conquest. There is often a kind of barbaric 

 capriciousness even in the irregularities of their course. It frequently 

 happened, that a boundary raised with infinite labour, soon became 

 superfluous, and as new spaces of country gradually fell a prey to 

 the progression of prosperous arms, was included by another on a 

 more comprehensive scale and wider compass. A straight line drawn 

 northward, from the southern coast of England about Dorsetshire 

 and Hampshire, only thirty miles into land, would cut through the 

 curve of no fewer than seven of these boundaries, successively 

 circulating one beyond the other, and which I believe to have been 

 reared by the Belgse, a formidable colony of the Celts from Gaul, 

 as they gradually extended their victories, and propagated their 



' The six grave-mounds belonging to Ancient Wiltshire, which have been 

 proved upon examination to be Anglo-Saxon, are described in Hoare's " Ancient 

 Wilts," i., 46, 48, 174 (barrow levelled), 234, 235; vol. ii. "Roman ^ra," 

 p. 26. The five secondary Anglo-Saxon interments are described in i., 79, 100, 

 113, 194, 236. 



