ON MOUNT ELWUND. 
117 
places, to which ignorance has given his name for such different 
purposes, a throne and a grave ! appear, from situation and 
construction, to have been really designed for one and the same 
use; great mountain-altars to the sun. That of Mourg-aub is 
of much vaster dimensions than that of Elwund ; but the form 
and the station of both platforms decide their purposes with 
me. Besides, some tradition of the latter having been a holy 
place, seems tacitly preserved in the perpetuated custom of car¬ 
rying burning lamps, or censers to it, as an act of devotion. That 
such “ high places” were the earliest scenes of sacrificial wor¬ 
ship, I have already mentioned may be traced in the most an¬ 
cient books of all countries, in the same way that Euripides 
writes of the first colonizers of Greece, who, 
On each rock's high point , consumed the victim 
’Mid the hallowed fire ! 
The rite, from repeated habit, being remembered here, after its 
original purpose had passed into oblivion, Solomon, or one of 
his race, according to the custom of the times, became heir to 
the honours of the tomb, as he had before inherited the throne 
at Pasargadse. 
At first, I had felt a little vexed at not finding the object of 
my expedition ; but the manifest antiquity of the old platform 
would have possessed sufficient interest with me, to have fully 
compensated for the disappointment, even had I not been more 
than repaid for double the trouble of the ascent, by one of the 
most stupendous views I ever beheld. 
I stood on the highest eastern peak of Elwund. The appa¬ 
rently interminable ranges of the Courdistan mountains spread 
before me, far to the north-west; while continued chains of the 
