22 ON SEPULCHRAL MONUMENTS. 
dantly in the Steppes, or vast plains in the South 
of Russia;—and I found considerable numbers 
in Roumelia, both north and south of the Bal- 
kan, and also in Servia and Bulgaria.—Jefferson 
(in his “Notes on the State of Virginia,”) des- 
cribes many of them in different parts of the 
New World;—in Africa they are said to be not 
unfrequent; and in Greece and Asia Minor they 
are seen in unusual quantities, and.of extraor- 
dinary dimensions.—Having had the good for- 
tune to visit several of the more celebrated of 
these Barrows, it may not perhaps be wholly 
uninteresting to the Society to hear a short 
description of the two which most deserve our 
attention,—viz., those at Sardis and Mycene. 
To commence with the latter.—The plain of 
Argos, in the N.E. of the Morea, is an extensive 
semicircle of flat, and for the most part, marshy 
land, situated at the head of the Gulph of Nau- 
plia, and apparently reclaimed from the sea at 
no very remote period, as indeed mythological 
history plainly indicates.—It is inclosed by a 
vast amphitheatre of hills, among which is situa- 
ted Mycene, the city of Atreus and Agamemnon, 
said to have been founded by Perseus, about 
1300 B.C.—Its remains are very accurately des- 
cribed by Pausanias, who flourished A.D. 180; 
though Strabo declares that in his time (B.C. 10) 
