2 On the Antiquities of the Peshawur District. [No. 1, 
way investigated, much less opened; and still fewer have been the 
attempts to search the hills which abut on this plain, although every 
attempt in this direction has been abundantly rewarded. Some of 
these latter, indeed, require description even more than search, as the 
remains of buildings on them alone are most remarkable. A late 
visit to three of these localities, induces me to say a few words, by 
no means by way of description in the least degree exhaustive, but 
rather by way of direction for any one with more leisure, and with 
more previous acquaintance with Indian, Buddhist, and Bactrian 
antiquities, than I have, to do these interesting subjects justice. 
The hill of Takhti Bai, or Bahat, as it is called by the natives, 
has been frequently mentioned, and must have been described before 
this. It is an isolated, barren hill of no great height, about eight 
miles west of Fort Hoti Mardan in Yusufzai. It forms, irregularly, 
three sides of a square, with the open side towards the North-west. 
The inner slopes of this hill are covered with the still standing shells 
of lofty buildings, constructed of hewn stones; most of them are of 
at least two stories, the openings for the beams of the upper floor 
covered with bits of broken pottery, which I have not noticed elsewhere.” [This 
opinion that a// the mounds are covered with broken pottery, though very gene- 
ral, is not correct : many are.| ‘‘I have come across these same tumuli in the 
Orkney Islands (in the north of Scotland), about Stonehenge on Salisbury 
Plain in England, on and about the battle-field of the Alma, on the Plateau of 
Sebastopol and about Kertch and Yenikale in the Crimea; and here again on the 
plains of the Punjab and in the valley of Peshawur. To all outward appearance, 
they are alike. On the Plateau north of the Alma, these tumuli were generally 
in great circles with intervals between each tumulus of about halfa mile. At 
nearly every point along the ridge of the Plateau of Sebastopol overlooking the 
Tchernaya, where the French, Turks and British had thrown up batteries, was a 
tumulus to be found. The white telegraph tower on the battle field of the Alma, 
captured by the Zouaves was built on an old tumulus. The tumuli on the plain 
between Peshawur and Hoti Mardan are also dotted in cireles. At Stennis in 
Orkney and at Stonehenge in England a druidical circle of standing stones is to 
be seen in the centre of the great circle of tumuli.” [There is such a circle of 
standing stones also at Shewa in Yusufzai, to which the people there attach very 
superstitious notions. The Khan of the place told me that he had frequently 
placed men to count the stones, but the stones kept increasing aud decreasing in 
number the whole time that they were being counted, and the same number 
would not come cut twice. There is a single stone of the same nature, with a 
broken one at a little distance from it, some miles to the south of Shewa, in the 
ynidst of the Mera (or desert) near a mound,| “I was at the opening of a tumu- 
Jus, on my own property in the Island of Ronsay in Orkney, which was in shape 
like a bee-hive under ground. A large stone covered tle opening and over the 
stone was some two or three feet of earth. It was about twelve feet hich from 
the floor inside to the aperture. There was an aperture below leading to some 
underground passages. It was close to the seashore and was called by the peo- 
ple a ‘ Paecht’s House.’” 
