86 ON THE ORIGIN OF CREMATION, 
“ Of these Russian and Siberian sepulchres, some (he says) 
are encompassed with a square wall of large quarry stones, 
placed in an erect position; others are covered only with a 
small heap of stones, or they are tumuli adorned at top. In 
many of these sepulchres the bones of men, and frequently 
of horses, are found, and in a condition that renders it pro- 
bable the bodies were not burnt before they were inhumed. 
Other bones shew clearly that they have been previously 
burnt ; because a part of them is unconsumed, and because 
they lie in a disordered manner, and some of them are want- 
ing. Urns, in which other nations of antiquity have deposi- 
ted the ashes of their dead, are never met with here. But 
sometimes what remained of the bodies after the combu- 
stion, and even whole carcases, are found wrapped up in thin 
plates of gold—There is a very remarkable circumstance 
observable in some of the tombs on the upper part of the 
Yenisei, which forms an exception to the general rule of 
other sepulchres. Instead of ornaments and utensils of gold 
and silver found in other tombs, you meet here only with 
copper utensils, Even such instruments as would have been 
better wrought of iron are here found all of copper, as 
knives, darts and daggers. The nation, therefore, whose 
dead are here inhumed, seems to have been unacquainted 
with the use of iron; and these tombs must accordingly be 
more ancient than the others *.” 
This learned writer seems himself to admit, that some of 
these monuments are far more ancient than others; and gives 
an indubitable proof of the high antiquity of some of them, 
when he remarks, that all the instruments found in them were 
made 
* Account of the Burial-places of the ancient 'l'artars, by the Reverend Wix- 
siam Tooxe, F.R.S. Chaplain to the English Factory at St Petersburgh, Ar- 
chaologia, vol, vii. p. 223, 224. 
