“A considerable way from the repository of the ashes and slags, and to the east of the Great Causeway, is another curious appearance. Here, in the pure basalt, seventy or eighty feet from the top of the cliff, is a horizontal bed of wood coal, eight feet thick. The coal to all appearance rests immediately on the basalt below, and the ends of perpendicular basaltic columns are seen distinctly to rest on it above. The basalt is not in the least changed by the contact of the coal, nor the coal by that of the basalt. The coal is very beautiful and distinct, and in one place is seen a coalified tree, (if I may use the word,) ten or twelve inches in diameter, running directly in below the basalt.
“Within sight of this spot, and about three hundred yards to the east of it, are the beautifully conspicuous basaltic pillars, forty-five feet long, and vertical, with the longest ones in the middle, and others gradually shortening towards each side, like the columns of an organ. From this appearance they have received the appropriate name of The Organ.
“At the bottom of this cliff, by examining and breaking the loose columnar pieces of the rock that have fallen down, we found many fine specimens of calcedony, zeolite, and semi-opal. These occur in cavities in the basalt. Sometimes the cavity is not completely filled with the calcedony or opal; and when that is the case, the empty space is observed to be always the upper part of the cavity, while the rock is in situ. Moreover, the surface of the calcedony or opal, next to the empty space, is always found to be flat and horizontal, which would shew that the substance must have been filtered into its situation in a fluid state, and afterwards consolidated.”
Stonehenge,—a celebrated monument of antiquity, stands in the middle of a flat area, near the summit of a hill six miles from Salisbury. It is inclosed by a circular double bank and ditch near thirty feet broad, after crossing which, we ascend thirty yards before we reach the work. The whole fabric consisted of two circles and two ovals. The outer circle is about one hundred and eight feet diameter, consisting, when entire, of sixty stones, thirty uprights, and thirty imposts, of which remain only twenty-four uprights, seventeen standing, and seven down, three and a half feet asunder; and eight imposts. Eleven uprights have their five imposts on them by the grand entrance. These stones are from thirteen to twenty feet high. The lesser circle is somewhat more than eight feet from the inside of the outer one, and consisted of forty lesser stones (the highest six feet,) of which only nineteen remain, and only eleven standing: the walk between these two circles is three hundred feet in circumference. The adytum, or cell, is an oval formed of ten stones, (from sixteen to twenty-two feet high,) in pairs, with imposts, which Dr. Stukeley calls trilithons, and above thirty feet high, rising in height as they go round, and each pair separate, and not connected as the outer pair; the highest eight feet. Within these are nineteen smaller single stones, of which only six are standing. Three of the five trilithons at the west end fell flat westward, levelling also in their descent, a stone of the second circle that stood in the line of their precipitation, on the 3d of January, 1797. At the upper end of the adytum is the altar, a large slab of blue coarse marble, twenty inches thick, sixteen feet long, and four broad; pressed down by the weight of the vast stones that have fallen upon it. The whole number of stones, uprights and altar, is exactly one hundred and forty. The stones are far from being artificial, but were most probably brought from those called the Grey Weathers, on Marlborough Downs, fifteen or sixteen miles off; and if tried with a tool, they appear of the same hardness, grain, and colour, generally reddish. The heads of oxen, deer, and other beasts, have been found on digging in and about Stonehenge; and human bones in the circumjacent barrows. There are three entrances from the plain to this structure, the most considerable of which is from the north-east, and at each of them were raised, on the outside of the trench, two huge stones, with two smaller within, parallel to them.
It has long been a dispute among the learned, by what nation, and for what purpose, these enormous stones were collected and arranged. The first account of this structure we meet with, is in Geoffrey of Monmouth, who, in the reign of King Stephen, wrote the History of the Britons, in Latin. He tells us, that it was erected by the counsel of Merlin, the British enchanter, at the command of Aurelius Ambrosius, the British king, in memory of four hundred and sixty Britons, who were murdered by Hengist the Saxon. The next account is that of Polydore Virgil, who says that the Britons erected this as a sepulchral monument of Boadicea, the famous British queen. Inigo Jones is of opinion, that it was a Roman temple, from a stone sixteen feet long, and four broad, placed in an exact position to the east, altar-fashion. Mr. Charlton attributed it to the Danes, who where two years masters of Wiltshire: a tin tablet, on which were some unknown characters, supposed to be Runic, was dug up near it, in the reign of Henry VIII. but is lost.
Its common name, Stonehenge, is Saxon, and signifies a Stone Gallows, to which these stones, having transverse imposts, bear some resemblance. It is also called, in Welsh, Choir Gawr, or the Giant’s Dance. Mr. Grose thinks that Dr. Stukeley has completely proved this structure to have been a British temple, in which the Druids officiated. He supposes it to have been the metropolitan temple of Great Britain, and translates the words choir gawr, the great choir, or temple. Mr. Bryant is of opinion, that it was erected by a colony of Cuthites, probably before the time of the Druids; because it was usual with them to place one vast stone upon another, for a religious memorial; and these they often placed so equally, that a breath of wind would sometimes make them vibrate. Of such stones, one remains in the pile of Stonehenge. The ancients distinguished stones erected with a religious view, by the name of Amber; by which was signified any thing solar and divine. The Grecians called them petræ ambrosiæ. Stonehenge, according to Mr. Bryant, is composed of these amber stones: hence the next town is denominated Ambresbury; not from a Roman Ambrosius, but from the ambrosia petræ, in whose vicinity it stood. Some of these were Rocking Stones; and there was a wonderful monument of this sort near Penzance, in Cornwall, which still retains the name of Main-amber, or the Sacred Stones. Such a one is mentioned by Apollonius Rhodius, supposed to have been raised in the time of the Argonauts, in the island of Tenos, as the monument of the two-winged sons of Boreas, slain by Hercules; and there are others in China, and other countries.
CHAP. LIX.
CURIOSITIES RESPECTING THE VARIOUS CUSTOMS OF MANKIND.
Curious Demonstrations of Friendship—Singularities of different Nations in Eating—Female Beauty and Ornaments—Various Modes of Salutation—Maiden—Lady of the Lamb—Curious Custom respecting Catching a Hare—Extraordinary Ancient Custom.