250 



interment. On learning this, we proceeded to make an ex- 

 cavation in the second mound, and found there also some 

 bones, and a broken pipe, of a very large size, but in shape 

 resembling the common tobacco pipes of the country. 



"While thus engaged, an old man, one of my tenants, 

 came up to me, and inquired whether I had ever seen ' the 

 North House,' that had been found on my property, not far 

 from the place where we then were. I had never heard the 

 term ' North House' before, and asked him what he meant, 

 ' Oh,' he said, ' a kind of house under ground, made of large 

 flags and stones, with a passage like a large sewer lead- 

 ing to it.' The North House, to which he referred, proved 

 to have been completely destroyed ; the stones had been car- 

 ried away for building some years previously. But one of the 

 fields in my demesne at Hampton, having been usually called 

 ' The North House meadow,' although the origin of thq 

 name had never before suggested itself, it occurred to me as 

 not unlikely that the name might have been given to it in 

 consequence of one of these North Houses having been at 

 some time discovered in it. 



" With the view of ascertaining this, we proceeded to'make 

 excavations in different parts of the field, and at length we 

 happened upon the top stone of just such a chamber as the 

 old man had described. 



" It was constructed with large stones, in the rudest man^ 

 ner ; the one stone projecting beyond that immediately below 

 it, till a kind of bee-hive arch was formed : its height might 

 have been six feet, and its diameter perhaps the same. There 

 was a winding passage, or sewer, about three feet in height, 

 and the same in breadth, constructed also of large flags and 

 stones, and probably twenty yards in length, leading into it, 

 and a small funnel, not more than one foot in its dimensions, 

 at the opposite side of the chamber : the passage and the fun- 

 nel were probably much larger, but they had been broken 

 into as they approached the surface of the hill. We traced 

 the side walls for a considerable distance. There was no 



