By the Rev. A. C. Smith. 163 



who even removed entirely the immense mound in the province of 

 Ekatarinoslav near Alexandropol.^ It took no less than five years 

 to effect this, for it was 250 feet in height ; and numerous articles 

 in gold, silver, and bronze were discovered there, as well as human 

 bones and skeletons of horses, proving its sepulchral character, and 

 making it probable that it was one of the catacombs of the Scythian 

 Kings described by Herodotus.^ Again an enormous tumulus, 

 called Altyn-obo, on the Golden Mountains, has been explored by 

 the Russians. It was walled from top to bottom like a Cyclopean 

 monument; and two others, somewhat smaller but similar in 

 structure were also examined : they were all proved to be sepulchral, 

 and tradition assigned them as the tombs of the mother of Mith- 

 ridates and other members of his family.^ Again on a spur of the 

 Golden Mountains, called by the Tartars Kouloba, on the Hill of 

 Cinders, is another large tumulus, which was also examined, and 

 in which, in addition to several ornaments, arms, and vessels of a 

 Scythian character, a human skeleton was found.* 



And now I pass on to that fertile field for archaeological research, 

 abounding as it does with so much of interest and historical associ- 

 ation, the immediate neighbourhood of Kertch, the particulars of 

 which we learn from Dr. Duncan Mac Pherson,^ who superintended 



1 Antiquities of Kertch by Duncan Mac Pherson, M.D., (Smith, Elder and Co.) 

 p. 86. 



* HerodotuA Melpomene, chap. 71. 

 ^ Antiquities of Kertch by Dr. Mac Pherson, p. 60. 



* Idem, p. 61. See also "Eussia and the Black Sea" by Danby Seymour, 

 Esq., M.P. 



^ The rich treasure found in the Crimean Kourgans, had long attracted obser- 

 vation, and most of these tumuli had been partially at least excavated, and 

 many of them ransacked at various periods : in more modern times too, the 

 Russians have carefully prosecuted Archaological research here, as in other parts 

 of that vast Empire : but owing to the account of such investigations having 

 been published only in Russian, a language rarely studied in this country, and 

 in wgrks difficult of access to the English antiquary, little -was known of these 

 discoveries to Western Archaeologists, till the publication of an interesting 

 Memoir given by Mons. Raoul Rochette in the Journal des Savans. More 

 detailed accounts of these Kourgans are to be found in Herr Anton AshiKs, 

 Description of a Panticaprean Catacomb " Kerchenskiya Drevnosti, &o." 

 Odessa 1845 fol : — Ermans " Archiv fiir Wissenshaftliche Kunde von Russland." 

 Band 4, 1844. Bemidoffs voyage dans la Russie Meridionale, vol. i., 535 et seq : 

 vol. ii., p. 1, et seq. Archteol. Journal, vi., 260. 



q2 



