By William Long, Esq., M.A. 847 



near Abury, I had the satisfaction to substantiate the conjectures 

 I had previously formed, respecting the nature and contents of the 

 barrows in this district. I had ever considered the stone circle at 

 Abury to be of a much older date than that of Stonehenge ; and in 

 the same light I had always considered the tumuli. These conjec- 

 tures have been corroborated by our late researches ; for although we 

 find the same modes of interment adopted here, as in South Wilt- 

 shire, yet we have found none of those costly articles which have 

 so often rewarded our labours in the southern district of our 

 county."^ "The absence of costly ornaments of amber and gold, 

 in the bai'rows of this district, as distinguishing them from those 

 near Stonehenge," says Dr. Thurnam, " is borne out by all the 

 more recent excavations of these tumuli. The immigrant tribe of 

 Belgse were doubtless more wealthy than the aboriginal Dobuni of 

 North Wilts, and also kept up a more intimate traffic with Gaul."- 

 These mute memorials of a remote age, over which, without im- 

 pairing them, the seasons have for centuries rolled their uninter- 

 rupted course, and to wliich we are indebted for such glimpses as 

 we have been able to catch, of the arts and customs of our British 

 ancestors, are full of interest to the thoughtful mind. They carry 

 it back to a time when the now deserted downs and lofty hills were 

 thickly-peopled tracts, when the wattled hut was the habitation, 

 when cattle were the riches, and the worship of the heavenly bodies' 

 the religion, of the Britons. How do they not bridge over the 

 interval between the present and a past long anterior to Saxons, 

 Danes, and E-omans; and in their presence, wliat recent events do 

 the Great Rebellion, the Wars of the Roses, and the Norman In- 

 vasion appear to be ! The knowledge, too, that they were raised 



tells us, was levelled in 1720; " a man's bones were found within abed of great 

 stones, forming a kind of arch. Several beads of amber, long and round, as big 

 as one's thumb end, were taken from it, and several enamel'd British beads of 

 glass : I got some of thum white in coloui', some were green." This seems to 

 have been the solitary exception to the absence of amber in these barrows. 



' Ancient Wiltshire, ii. p. 93. 



* 'Crania Britannica,' "Description of Skull from Barrow at Keunct," p. 5. 

 The writer is indebted to Dr. Thuruam for much valuable assistance in the com- 

 pilation of the present paper. 



' " The circlo of the stars" and "the lights of heaven." — See Wisdom of 

 Solomon, ziii. 2. 



