a chain from a gigantic crane, and which required only to be worked by the wheel and pulley of his partner "Hyperbius (that is, a man of surpassing strength), to be raised from the ground, suspended in the air, and deposited wherever the artist wished to deposit the huge mass.

This necessary connection between the Siceli, the Pelasgi, and the Hyperboreans, may also throw some light upon the predilection which the latter people felt for the Athenians, who, according to good authority, were the last in discarding the ancient rites, religion, and perhaps language of the older race, and in conforming to "Hellenismus." This very pertinacity on their part might have been one cause why they so suddenly, when released from the Dorian chain, burst with such energy and vigour into poetic life and intellectual development.

Here, again, I must make a digression, in order to connect the sacred pathway of the Hyperborean virgins with megalithic structures. Of Dodona, the Pelasgic establishment, we cannot safely predicate anything, except that its oaks were oracular, and that its cauldrons might have been something more than great metallic bells. As I have before said, I am far more anxious to display the materials within my reach to younger archæologians, than scientifically to combine them into a compact essay, and especially to reduce to silence those "faineants" who would fain persuade the world that we have not ample means for thoroughly investigating the whole question.

The author of the Cyclops Christianus, page 29, says :— "Sir John Chardin relates that nearly two days' journey from Tauris, in Media, towards Sultania, he saw large circles of hewn stones; and the Persians affirmed that certain giants called the Caous," waging war in Media, had held their councils in that place, each bringing with him a stone to serve him for a chair. They were so big that eight men could hardly move one, and it was supposed they must have been brought from six miles off."-Vol. viii. p. 371.

This account, according to Mr. Herbert, points to no age or

date-nothing definite, certainly; but it assuredly implies that the then existing generation of Perians assigned, like all other nations, ourselves excepted, such constructions to a race of giants" Caous," or "Cawr "-not of their blood.”

But these circles of hewn stones, and used as council-halls, were, at least, as old as the time of Homer, as partly shown before. But hear what Homer says, Odyssey, iii., v. 31 :—

They came to the assembly and the 'Hedræ,' or seats of the Pylian warriors."

It was a solemn festival, and the whole community were gathered together to sacrifice and feast. Of what materials the "Hedræ " were, we learn from the same book, v. 407 :"Nestor came forth and sat down upon hewn stones, which were before his lofty gate, white, glittering with oil, on which Neleus used formerly to sit." Evidently the seat of justice before the gate. Then came his sons and "seated Telemachus beside him."

The scholar may compare this seat with the "sedd," or "gorsedd," whence Agamemnon, without rising from it, addressed the assembly (Iliad, xix. v. 7, 8).

Nay, in the descent from Dodona into the Malæan Gulf, the Hyperborean maidens in older times, and the sacred gifts in latter times, visited the most sacred precincts of the older religion, the very name of which is full of signification.

The land Μηλια or Μελις derives its name from the word Μηλα, and is used to express a civilized region, in the same manner as its root is applied as a general term both to the fruits which man has reclaimed from the wild state and improved for his own use, and to those animals, especially sheep, which we now call the domesticated races. Hence the Latin "Mala," and the Cumrian "Avalau," restricted to the mellow "fruits" alone. The Celtic scholar will be reminded here of " Ynys Afallon.”

Callimachus calls its chief city "Sacred," as may be seen in the preceding quotation. "Within its bounds took place the fiery self-immolation of Heracles, and his supposed ascent to heaven. The scene of this catastrophe, so magnificently de

scribed by Sophocles in his Trachinia, was Mount Eta, where it encroaches upon the Ægæan Sea, and overlooks the narrow strip of land known as the Straits of Thermopylæ. Close to the hot springs and baths was an altar of Heracles; and where the Asopus enters the sea there was a wider space, in which was situated the lepov of the Amphictyonic Demeter, and where still are the Hedræ' of the Amphictyones and an legov of Amphictyon himself." Again, in describing the path along which Ephialtes guided the Persians over Eta to the rear of Leonidas and his Spartans, my author thus writes-" This path stretches along the ridge of the hill, and ends over against the town Alpenus, the first of the Locrian settlements from Melias, and the stone called 'Melampugos,' and the Hedræ' of the Cercopes. All these quotations are from Herodotus, lib. vii. cap. 176, 199, 200.

I feel as confident as a man can be, that even if the "Hedræ," both of the Amphictyonic Council and of the Cercopes, have disappeared, which, nevertheless, I strongly doubt, yet the stone "Melampugos," one of the nicknames of Heracles, still remains undisturbed, where Herodotus saw it. Equally certain am I that megalithic structures will be found still existing at one of the sources of the Spercheius, in the same vicinity where Dr. Clarke saw in the plain what he says is called in Wales a "cromlech." It is also worth observing, that the Deputation visited the little island of Tenos, famous for its megalithic Logan-stone, mentioned by Apollonius Rhodius, and that the islanders had the honour of escorting the sacred offerings to Delos.

These regions have been for ages left alone in their glory, and it was in similar deserted spots that Pausanias found most of the rude stone circles described by him. For example, lib. ii. c. 54, he thus writes:-" Nearly half a mile from the then more modern city of Hermione was the old site. Here are circles of great 'Logades'' stones, and within them they perform the mysterious rites of Demeter."

But we have positive testimonies respecting the western

position of the Hyperboreans. According to Poseidonius, who himself travelled in Gaul (vide Scholiast on the Argonautes of Apollonius, ver. 677, lib. ii.)-" Hyperboreans dwell in the vicinity of the Alps of Italy." Plutarch, in his life of Camillus, quotes Heraclides Ponticus, as recording "that the Gauls, who conquered the Romans on the Allia, and captured the city, were Hyperboreans," a statement which coincides with that of Poseidonius. And a certain Protarchus, quoted by the Byzantine Stephanus, writes "that all who dwell below the Alps are named Hyperboreans."

Nay, more, we learn from a tradition, recorded by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, that Latinus was the son of Heracles by a Hyperborean maiden, whom he had received as a hostage from her father, and was leading with him "Heracles, in his return to his native Greece and Argos, cam with his Hyperborean maiden into Italy, and gave her in inarriage to Faunus.' These quotations are taken from Gesner's admirable paper upon the subject of the Hyperboreans. See it at the end of Herman's edition of the Orphica.

Gesner alludes to the fable of the Scythian or Hyperborean Abaris, who," when he was returning from Hellas to his own country, that he might convey the gold he had collected for the god to the Temple of the Hyperboreans, went to Italy, where he saw Pythagoras, and recognized him as his own Hyperborean Apollo."

"Now," adds Gesner, "is it to be supposed that the men, who either invented or reported the travels of the sacred deputation to the Deliai. Apollo, and of Heracles and Abaris, were triflers without a grain of common sense, and not persons who had sufficient acquaintance with the topography to enable them to know, that persons intending to visit Delos from the Pontus Euxinus, or Scythia from Greece, could have nothing to do with Italy or the Adriatic? What then? There were Hyperboreans, unless I am deceived, even on the western shore of the external ocean. So that even Africans and Iberians, washed by the Western Ocean, were included under the term."

From the various authorities recorded by me, I think it may fairly be inferred that—

First, There were a people called not by a Gentile name like Thracians, Getæ, Scythæ, but from their geographical position, Hyperboreans, intimately connected with the earliest inhabitants of what, at a later period, was called Hellas, and with its primitive religion.

Secondly, That they dwelt in a land where the olive, the laurel, and, among other animals, asses, were to be found in a fertile soil and a favourable climate.

Thirdly, That the western expeditions of the mythological Heracles, in search of sacred plants, of milder fruits, and a finer breed of animals, had been undertaken into the regions now called the th-west of Spain and Gaul, west of the Alps; and that inhabitants of these countries were called Hyperboreans.

Fourthly, That in the ocean, over against "Celtica (say from the Spanish Cape Finisterre to the mouth of the Elbe), there was an island, not smaller than Sicily, situated under the Northern Bear, inhabited by men called Hyperboreans.

Now, all this depends on geographical evidence of the positive kind, and cannot be applied to any other island than Great Britain.

But in the Hecatæan description, we have other marks more social and mythological respecting this insular Hyperborean community.

Answer.

First, it is stated that Latona was born here. Latona was another name for night, from, whom the sun and moon outsprang. But the Western Celts, according to Cæsar, sprang from Dis, the male myth for night. Hence the preference among the Celtic nations of giving precedence to night before day. So that a week is " wyth-nos," a fortnight "pymtheg-nos."

Secondly, That the great God of the Hyperborean island was Apollo. Answer.-Our "Melin ap Cynfelin," the "Belinus " of the Adriatic Veneti of the classic age, the "Belenus" of the