28 The Cairns of Tinnevelly. [No. 9, new series 



was an urn about 4 feet in height, and about 3 feet in its greatest 

 diameter. Each urn had been closely surrounded by a chamber of 

 unhewn stones, boulders, such as are at present procurable in the 

 bed of the adjoining river. The urns were without ornament of 

 any kind, except that the mouths of them were encircled by a bead 

 moulding. I examined them carefully, hoping to discover some 

 inscriptions upon them but in vain. The only marks or figures 

 upon them were upon the inside and close to the edge. They 

 were thus, on one side " — directly opposite — tc The 

 lines forming these figures were each about 3 inches long. The 

 manufacture of the urns was coarse, strength and not beauty of 

 finish, having been evidently the object of the manufacture. On 

 turning out the clay with which the urns were filled, here and 

 there I discovered small layers of bone completely pulverized, but 

 to my mind entirely forbidding the idea that they had ever been 

 submitted to fire. If I am right these Cairns differ in a very mate- 

 rial point from the Cairns which have been discovered in Ireland, 

 with which I am better acquainted than with any others. How- 

 ever I do not contend for this. At the bottom of the urns were 

 discovered several weapons, all of iron, but from being imbedded 

 in clay, reduced almost, with few exceptions, to bare oxide. Such 

 as they are, however, they claim for the age to which they belong 

 considerable acquaintance with the arts : one of them, that which 

 I have denominated in the drawing a hog spear, is not exceeded 

 in manufacture by weapons of that kind now in use among the 

 Natives. The large oblong pieces of iron (one of which is encir- 

 cled by a moveable ring) marked in the drawing (XX) were also 

 found in the urns, but of their use I am ignorant. I would hazard 

 a conjecture, however, and call them Axes. In addition to the 

 weapons, several small earthen vessels of most exquisite manufac- 

 ture were also found ; of their original use it is impossible now to 

 conjecture almost, but I would observe that, in some of the Irish 

 Cairns, vessels similar to the cup, have been found, and are called 

 by the Irish Antiquaries " Lachrymatories.'' 1 Whether this vessel 

 was appropriated to such a purpose I do not determine. The 

 pottery of the small vessels is exactly like that of vessels which I 

 have seen from Cairns on the Annamalies and Nilgiris. 



