THE TOWN OF FELHAM. 



93 



a Rocking Stone among the ruins in Copan, says : " Astonishment is 

 forcibly excited on viewing the structure; because, large as it is, and al- 

 though entirely of stone and of enormous weight, it may be set in mo- 

 tion by the slightest impulse of the hand.*' Among the Greek's, Rock- 

 ing Stones occur as funeral monuments ; and frequently on cliffs over- 

 hanging the sea. Fosbroke, an English writer, in his i; Antiquities," 

 speaking on the subject, says : " There is a singular conformity to the 

 Greek custom in the following passages of Ossian : ' A rock bends along 

 the coast, with all its echoing wood. On the top is the circle of Loda : 

 the mossy stone of power ; ' and again — ' The king of Lora is my 

 son ; he bends at the stone of my power.' It appears that the bards 

 walked around the stone singing. That at Staunton, England, evidently 

 in order to be conspicuous, is placed on the nose of a promontory loft- 

 ier than the neighboring heights." The North American Mandan In- 

 dians have a sacred stone, and so vivid is the similarity, that I can al- 

 most say it originated with the Druids, the ceremonies only being modi- 

 fied by the varying ages and circumstances through which they have 

 passed. The " Book of the United States " says : " The "Mandans have 

 their medicine stone, which is their great oracle ; and they believe with 

 implicit confidence whatever it announces. Every spring, and occasion- 

 ally during the summer, a deputation, accompanied by jugglers, magi- 

 cians, or conjurors, visits the sacred spot where there is a large stone, 

 about twenty feet in circumference, with a smooth surface. There 

 the deputies smoke, taking a few whiffs themselves and then cere- 

 moniously offering the pipe to the stone, they leave there their presents 

 and withdraw to some distance during the night. Before morning (Druid- 

 ical priest-craft again) the presents have disappeared — the Great Spirit, 

 according to their belief, having taken them away; and they read the 

 destinies of their nation on some marks on the stone, which the juggling 

 priests, who have made them, and secretly manage the whole transaction, 

 can easily decipher. The "Minnatree Indians have, also, a stone of the 

 same kind." Bradford in his " American Antiquities," speaks thus of a 

 rocking stone, near Caxamatca, South America, which, from the accu- 

 mulation of dirt around it, had lost its rocking character — " It is a large 

 block of free-stone. It has two grooves cut across it, near to the centre, 

 four inches deep and five wide. The site of this stone commands a 

 most beautiful prospect of the valley of Caxamatca. Doubless in that 

 groove the Uruidical priest sat administering unjust justice. a 



At a short distance from the priory near the angle formed by the in- 



a Correspondence of the Baltimore Sim, Iverton Letters on Antiquities by Robert n. Llver^ 

 ing, Lancaster, Onio, 1844. 



