166 Silbury. 



ancient city of Panticapaeum) evidently the work of man, though 

 the height and size are so remarkable that it is difficult to believe 

 the mound to be the result of human labour ; in shape it is hemi- 

 spherical, and its substance consists of large stones confusedly 

 heaped together." Such are the wonderful Crimean Kourgans, 

 those vast tumuli proved to have been sepulchral ; and I cannot 

 dismiss my account of them, without calling attention to the remark 

 of Mr. Winter Jones in his very interesting paper on the Kertch 

 antiquities, published long before the Crimean campaign and Dr. 

 Mac Pherson's discoveries ; a remark with which he sums up his 

 observations, and which I most heartily commend to any future 

 explorers of Silbury ; " The English Archaeologist will not fail to 

 recognize the curious coincidence in the fact of the deposit in these 

 Kurgans being commonly on the North-East side of the tumulus, 

 which is in accordance with the observation frequently made in 

 the examination of barrows in our own country." ' 



Thus far as regards the larger tumuli of Europe, and I have 

 dwelt so long on the details of some of the most interesting of 

 them, all of which have been proved to be sepulchral, that I must 

 endeavour to compress my remarks on those in the other quarters 

 of the globe, confining my account of most of them to a bare 

 enumeration of their localities ; and I can yet point to many a 

 large mound, either proved or traditionally declared to contain the 

 mortal remains of men, not only in Asia and Africa, but even in 

 America and Australia, showing that this was the natural impulse 

 of primitive uncivilized races in all parts of the world, to com- 

 memorate their dead in so simple but enduring a manner. 



And first we have but to cross the Straits from Kertch and the 

 Tauric Chersonese, abounding as that region does in tumuli of 

 every size, and we find that on the plains round Phanagoria on the 

 Asiatic side the country is no less full of them : here too they are 

 essentially of Milesian and Scythian structure, for the same people 

 colonized both districts.^ 



And now passing on to that most classic of all lands, the plains 



• Archseological Journal, vol. vi., p. 266. 

 2 Mac Pherson's Antiquities of Kertch. 



