Page:Rude Stone Monuments.djvu/479

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Chap. XII.
CAUBUL.
453

feet from the inner one. The natives have no tradition about its erection, except the same myth which we find in Somersetshire, that a wedding party, passing over the plain, were turned into stone by some powerful magician.[1]

Rude Stone Monuments 0479.png

199.
Circle at Deh Ayeh, near Darabgerd.

At present, these Eusufzaie circles, and those described by Sir William Ouseley at Deh Ayeh,[2] are almost the only examples we have to bridge over the immense gulf that exists between the Eastern and Western dolmen regions. Even the last, however, is only a frail prop for a theory, inasmuch as we have only a drawing of it by Sir W. Ouseley, who, in his description, says: "I can scarcely think the arrangement of these stones wholly, though it may be partly, natural or accidental." Coupled with the stone represented as figure 13 on the same plate, in Sir William Ouseley's work, I feel no doubt about these belonging to the class of rude-stone monuments, but we must know of more examples and more about them before we can reason with confidence regarding them. Another example, which certainly appears to be artificial, is recorded by Chardin. In travelling between Tabriz and Miana, he observed on his left hand several circles of hewn stones, which his companions informed him had been placed there by the Caous — the giants of the Kaianian dynasty. "The stones," he remarks, "are so large, that eight men could hardly move one of them, yet they must have been brought from quarries in the hills, the nearest of which is twenty miles distant."[3] Numerous travellers must have passed that way since, but no one

  1. 'Journal Asiatic Soc. Bengal,' p. i. No. 1, 1870.
  2. 'Travels in Persia,' ii. p. 124, pl. lv. fig. 14.
  3. 'Voyages en Perse, &c.,' i. p. 267.