327 
antiquary, nor indeed by any one who had a sufficient 
amount of human sympathy or common knowledge either to 
care about, or be aware of, the interest and value attaching 
to such monuments of a departed age and race. The fact is, 
as there is scarcely any reason to doubt, that not mere 
ignorant curiosity even, but simply the expectation of meet- 
ing with buried treasure was the moving impulse which 
directed the tools of these investigators. Nor is the idea that 
these grave-hills do — at least, may — contain hoarded treasure, 
by any means extinct even yet among the dwellers in our far 
away, little-instructed country side. On one occasion last year, 
I only obtained permission to examine a houe on a lately 
enclosed portion of the moor, and now belonging to a neigh- 
bouring freeholder, on condition of turning over to him any 
and all the gold I might find within ; and on other occasions 
I have been saluted in mid-labour with the question, " Was 
I laiting goud ?" or, after its close, " Had I fun any 
goud ?" 
In some few instances, the gold-seeking examination seems 
to have been quite baffled — disappointed, it always would be, 
of course ; but baffled — by the fact that the deposit in those 
cases had not been placed exactly in the centre. Thus, in 
two separate instances — both on the Skelton Moor — and in 
a third, on the Gruisbro' Moor, the deposit happened to lie 
from three-and-a-half to five feet west of the centre; and 
thus, though the central opening had been sunk to within a 
short distance of the interments, they had escaped detection : 
and fortunately so ; for two of the urns thus reserved to 
reward the labour of a later seeker, are, alike through their 
character and the circumstances attending their deposit, 
invested with a peculiar kind and degree of interest. 
But though the Cleveland Gfrave-hills have thus suffered, 
what all archaeologists with one consent must term, wanton 
violation and plunder as regards their central portion and 
BB 
