856 



THE BRITISH ISLES. 



the use of scaling-ladders, tuul recesses occur at regular intervals on the inside of 

 the wall. Cromlechs, cairns, standing stones, symbolical sculptures, circles of 

 stones, pile dwellings, and vitrified forts are found in several localities both on the 

 mainland and the islands. Primitive monuments of this kind form one of the 

 most salient landscape features in the Orkneys. On Pomona there is a district of 

 several square miles in area which still abounds in prehistoric monuments of every 

 description, although many stones have been carried away by the neighbouring 

 farmers. In the tumulus of Meashow, opened in 1861, were discovered over 

 000 Runic inscriptions, and the carved images of fanciful animals. On the same 

 island are the standing stones of Stennis ; and on Lewis, 12 miles to the west of 



Fig. I' 



-The Standing Stones of Stennis. 



Stornoway, the " grey stones of Callernish." These latter, forty-eight in number, 

 are also known as Tuirsachan, or " Field of Mourning," and they still form a perfect 

 circle, partly buried in peat, which has grown to a height of from 6 to 12 feet 

 around them.* AVe know that these constructions belong to different ages, and 

 that now and then the stones raised by the earliest builders were added to by their 

 successors. Christian inscriptions in oghams and runes in characters not older, 

 according to Miinch, than the beginning of the twelfth century, have been 

 discovered on these monuments. At Newton, in Aberdeenshire, there is a stone 

 inscribed in curiously shaped letters, not yet deciphered. 



* Wilson, 'Trehistoric Annals of Scotland." 



