ROUGH STONE MONUMENTS 



a bronze pin, and some fragments of bone. Others 

 appear to contain no cists. 



In the other islands of the west coast few circles 

 seem to remain ; there are, however, one at 

 Kirkabrost in Skye, and another at Kingarth in 

 Bute. 



At Stromness in Orkney is the famous circle 

 called the Ring of Brogar. It originally con- 

 sisted of sixty stones forming a circle 340 feet in 

 diameter, outside which was a ditch 29 feet wide. 

 In a direction 6o° east of south from the centre, 

 and at a distance of 63 chains, is a standing stone 

 called the Watchstone, 18 feet high, and 42 or 43 

 chains further on in the same line is a second 

 stone, the Barnstone, 15 feet high. To the left 

 of this line are two stones apparently placed at 

 random, and to the right are the few remaining 

 blocks of the Ring of Stenness, somewhere to the 

 north of which was the celebrated pierced block 

 called the " Stone of Odin," destroyed early in 

 the last century. At a distance of 42 or 43 chains 

 to the north-east of the Barnstone lies the tumulus 

 of Maeshowe. This tumulus conceals a long 

 gallery leading into a rectangular chamber. The 

 walls of this latter are built of horizontal courses 

 of stones, except at the corners, where there are 

 tall, vertically-placed slabs. The chamber has 

 three niches or recesses, one on each of its closed 

 sides. The roof is formed by corbelling the walls 

 and finishing oft with slabs laid across. If one 



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