Oar. 1850. NURTIUNG MONUMENTS. 319 



forty yards broad, and turbid ; its bed, which is of basalt, 

 is 2,454 feet above the sea: it is crossed by a raft pulled 

 to and fro by canes. 



Nurtiung contains a most remarkable collection of those 

 sepulchral and other monuments, which form so curious a 

 feature in the scenery of these mountains and in the habits 

 of their savage population. They are all placed in a fine 

 grove of trees, occupying a hollow ; where several acres are 

 covered with gigantic, generally circular, slabs of stone, 

 from ten to twenty-five feet broad, supported five feet above 

 the ground upon other blocks. For the most part they are 

 buried in brushwood of nettles and shrubs, but in one 

 place there is an open area of fifty yards encircled by 

 them, each with a gigantic headstone behind it. Of the 

 latter the tallest was nearly thirty feet high, six broad, and 

 two feet eight inches in thickness, and must have been 

 sunk at least five feet, and perhaps much more, in the 

 ground. The flat slabs were generally of slate or horn- 

 stone ; but many of them, and all the larger ones, were of 

 syenitic granite, split by heat and cold water with great 

 art. They are erected by dint of sheer brute strength, the 

 lever being the only aid. Large blocks of syenite were 

 scattered amongst these wonderful erections. 



Splendid trees of Bombax, fig and banyan, overshadowed 

 them : the largest banyan had a trunk five feet in dia- 

 meter, clear of the buttresses, and numerous small trees of 

 Celtis grew out of it, and an immense flowering tuft of 

 Vanda ccerulea (the rarest and most beautiful of Indian 

 orchids) flourished on one of its limbs. A small plantain 

 with austere woolly scarlet fruit, bearing ripe seeds, was 

 planted in this sacred grove, where trees of the most 

 tropical genera grew mixed with the pine, birch, l\J/jrica, 

 and Viburnum. 



