1847.] 



Neilgherry Hillsj ^c. 



101 



cannot now be known unless they were intended as cinctures to keep 

 the people at a convenient distance from the officiating priest." 



Here I request the reader to compare the italicized passages in my 

 account of the antiquities of Fair-Lawn with the foregoing extract. 



A few more words remain to be said here regarding the cairns, 

 sufficiently important however to entitle my views about them to fur- 

 ther consideration. 



The cairns on the Neilgherries, it has been seen, contain an urn 

 or urns holding burnt bones and charcoal, brass vessels, knives, and 

 spear heads, carefully buried under a large stone in the centre, with 

 numerous other urns dispersed under the surface. Compare this 

 with the following extract from the article " Cairn" in the Encyclo- 

 poedia Britannica. 



*' Such might have been the reasons in some instances, where 

 *' the evidences of stone chests and urns are wanting : but these 

 ** are so generally found that they seem to determine the most usual 

 " purpose of the cairns in question to have been for sepulchral mo- 

 " numents." 



'* The stone chests, the repository of the urns and ashes, are 

 " lodged in the earth beneath : sometimes only one, sometimes more 

 " are thus deposited ; and Mr. Pennant mentions an instance of 17 

 " being discovered under the same pile." 



The founders of the cairns in Great Britain were Celtic Scythians, 

 and I am endeavouring to show that the Thautawars belonged to the 

 same family. 



I recently opened a small cairn and found in it an urn just capa- 

 cious enough to hold the partly burnt cranium of a human being ; 

 within this skull was another vessel full of mould. The skull and 

 knee bones of a deceased Thautawar having been kept for some 

 months subsequent to the cremation of the body, are burnt and 

 buried. 



A kind of cairn has recently fallen under my observation, that I 

 have not before seen. Instead of the circular mound of stones with 

 a well in the centre, a circular space is enclosed by slabs several feet 

 high, set on end touching each other. 



Dr. Thomas Browne in his Hydriotaphia or Urnburial states the 

 practice was in use amongst the Celts, Sarmatians, Germans, Gauls, 

 Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians. 



It is worthy of observation that the contents of some urns dug up 

 in London contained many things in common with those found on 



