324 Memoir on the Topes and [July, 



chosen the rising ground at the roots of the hills for their locations, 

 the ancient city of Kabul (still visible in the remains of mounds or 

 heaps) also occupying that basal line. 



The position of the monuments, if not influenced by natural causes, 

 or selected from motives of religious veneration, is rather fanciful; those 

 which I have seen being either situate close under the cliff of the 

 mountains, or secluded within recesses, wherever a running stream 

 had its course ; and it would appear that a rill of water nourishing a few 

 trees or patches of cultivation and verdure was a conjunctive feature 

 of every spot. The most usual site of those structures is an isolated rising 

 ground, washed by a perennial current. Trophies of such magnitude, 

 serving merely as receptacles for the dead, and often devoid of any 

 traces either of them or of the living, sequestered and almost shut out 

 from sight, will not be sufficiently intelligible to our ideas, except by 

 comparing them with edifices in other regions of the world, the object 

 of which is known : — if they had been smaller they must have fallen to 

 ruin in a few centuries. The masses of Manikydla in the Khyber Pass 

 and at Peshdwer almost forbid the idea of identifying them as tombs, ex- 

 cept some more decided proofs are forthcoming than have yet appeared, 

 though we are not without analogies in the size of some of the Mu- 

 hammedan cemeteries, not to speak of the pyramids of Egypt them- 

 selves, while the absence of any inscriptions to denote another purpose, 

 leaves us in the former belief. 



Of the sepulchres excavated by M. Martin Honigberger, amount- 

 ing to more than thirty, the greater part have their sites at Jeldldbdd and 

 the adjacent territories, and it is this spot particularly that commands our 

 notice, since it may be assumed to have formed the seat of one of the 

 Bactrian sovereignties, as Balkh did another ; the more readily as it 

 would seem to answer in its locale and conformation to the spot which 

 Alexander consecrated with Bacchanalian revels ; and it is certainly 

 from physical position fully eligible for the capital of a kingdom, 

 uniting, as if by a band, the temperature and even some of the produc- 

 tions of an intertropical climate, with zones chilled by perpetual frost, 

 having a considerable expanse of level, and a soil irrigated by perenni- 

 al streams. Here we behold the tombs of a long race of kings (as I 

 suppose them to be) which have survived in obscurity the lapse of 

 many centuries : a large proportion of them, indeed the majority, have 

 crumbled into mere tumuli ; but, except those opened by Mr. Honig- 

 berger they appear to have been hitherto untouched by the hand of 

 man. 



Muhammedan bigotry, which swept away all the traces of written 

 knowledge within its reach, and defaced the memorials of whole nations, 



