three thousand years, and by towers externally so like his own as hardly to be distinguishable to an unpractised eye. The form of the towers themselves lends considerable plausibility to the defensive theory. Such a Nurhag, for instance, as that of Santa Barbara (woodcuts Nos. 186, 187), surrounded by four lesser ones, connected by a platform, and dominated by the central tower, is a means of defence we might now adopt, provided we may assume the existence of a parapet, which has fallen through age.
When we come to look a little more closely at this military question, we perceive that we are attempting to apply to a people who certainly had no projectiles that would carry farther than arrows, principles adapted to artillery or musketry tire. The Nurhags are placed at such distances as to afford no support to one another before the invention of gunpowder, and though in themselves not indefensible, they possess the radical defect of having no accommodation for their garrisons. It is impossible that men could live, cook, and sleep in the little circular apartments in their interior, and the platforms added very little to their accommodation. Had the four detached Nurhags at Santa Barbara been connected with walls only, so as to surround the central tower with a court, the case would have been very different; but as in all instances this is filled up, so as to form a platform, it is evident that it was exposure, not shelter, that was sought in their construction.[1]
Another, and even stronger, argument is derived from their number. De la Marmora asserts that the remains of at least three thousand Nurhags can now be traced in Sardinia,[2] and there seems no reason to doubt the truth of his calculation, nor his assertion that they were once much more numerous, and that they are dispersed pretty evenly over the whole island. Can any one fancy a state of society in such an island which would require that there should be three thousand castles and yet no fortified cities as places of refuge? They were not erected to protect the island against a foreign
- ↑ The Scotch brochs, which are in their construction the erections most like these, have all courtyards in their centre, in which all the domestic operations of the garrison could be carried on conveniently, and they only needed to creep into the chambers in the wall to sleep.
- ↑ 'Voyage en Sardaigne,' pp. 46 and 116.
