162 Silbury. 



my argument. Thence I proceed to Northern Europe, and call 

 attention to the large tumuli there, some of which are of such vast 

 dimensions and adorned with such enormous blocks of stone 

 (wherein the Northmen especially delighted) that they are still 

 regarded by the natives as of stupendous magnificence : ' it has 

 never however been disputed there, that these are the tombs of the 

 mighty dead, (whose souls wander, and whose shades drink mead 

 out of the skulls of their enemies, in the halls of Yalhalla) though 

 I am not aware that any of the larger ones have been explored. 

 Therefore I merely allude to them as we hurry by, but above all, I 

 would point out as more particularly deserving of notice the great 

 mounds of old Upsala, the sepulchres of the ancient " gods of 

 Scandinavia" as they are called, the graves of Odin, Thor and 

 Freya.^ 



And now I come to the vast empire of Russia, abounding as it 

 does in large tumuli, and entering upon the almost boundless 

 Steppe, we are told by an eminent traveller (the Baron Von 

 Haxthausen) that "all trace of human life disappears, and the 

 traveller sees nothing but the heavens above him, and the boundless 

 flat green carpet spread out around, while here and there small 

 and regularly formed mounds rise up to his view : on either side he 

 perceives also low ridges of hills, and upon these again at intervals, 

 large conically shaped mounds : the latter are occasionally sur- 

 mounted by roughly cut stone figures, which look down like ghosts 

 upon the silent desert. The country over which they are scattered, 

 as already ascertained, comprises more than 600,000 square miles. 

 The statues are made of a stone which is not found nearer than 400 

 miles from the spot where they have been erected ; and this is the 

 case with regard not to one statue only, but to thousands."^ Such 

 is the general aspect of the dreary Steppe, but some of the largest 

 of these tumuli have been carefully examined by the Russians : 



1 Archffiologia, vol. ii., p. 264. Monum. Dan., lib. i., c. vi. Monumenta 

 Sueo-Gothica, lib. i., pp. 215—217. 



2 Northern Travel by Bayard Taylor: London, 1858, p. 17. See Mxurray'a 

 Handbook for Northern Europe, vol. ii. 



^ The Russian Empire, its people, institutions and resources, by Baron Von 

 Haxthausen, vol. ii., chap, ii , pp. 79—80. 



