. The earth and its inhabitants ... wick, bulges out near its base, probably to prevent * Macaulay, A Voyage to and History of St. G. Seton, St. Kilda, Past and Present. 856 THE BRITISH ISLES. the use of scaling-ladders, tuul recesses occur at regular intervals on the inside ofthe wall. Cromlechs, cairns, standing stones, symbolical sculptures, circles ofstones, pile dwellings, and vitrified forts are found in several localities both on themainland and the islands. Primitive monuments of this kind form one of themost salient landscape features in the Orkneys. On Pomona there is a distr
. The earth and its inhabitants ... wick, bulges out near its base, probably to prevent * Macaulay, A Voyage to and History of St. G. Seton, St. Kilda, Past and Present. 856 THE BRITISH ISLES. the use of scaling-ladders, tuul recesses occur at regular intervals on the inside ofthe wall. Cromlechs, cairns, standing stones, symbolical sculptures, circles ofstones, pile dwellings, and vitrified forts are found in several localities both on themainland and the islands. Primitive monuments of this kind form one of themost salient landscape features in the Orkneys. On Pomona there is a district ofseveral square miles in area which still abounds in prehistoric monuments of everydescription, although many stones have been carried away by the neighbouringfarmers. In the tumulus of Meashow, opened in 1861, were discovered over000 Runic inscriptions, and the carved images of fanciful animals. On the sameisland are the standing stones of Stennis ; and on Lewis, 12 miles to the west of Fig. I -The Standing Stones of Stornoway, the grey stones of Callernish. These latter, forty-eight in number,are also known as Tuirsachan, or Field of Mourning, and they still form a perfectcircle, partly buried in peat, which has grown to a height of from 6 to 12 feetaround them.* AVe know that these constructions belong to different ages, andthat now and then the stones raised by the earliest builders were added to by theirsuccessors. Christian inscriptions in oghams and runes in characters not older,according to Miinch, than the beginning of the twelfth century, have beendiscovered on these monuments. At Newton, in Aberdeenshire, there is a stoneinscribed in curiously shaped letters, not yet deciphered. * Wilson, Trehistoric Annals of Scotland.
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectgeography, bookyear18
