- rous Tartar villages, where the houses were constructed
with wood and moss, with thin pieces of ice fixed in holes in the walls instead of windows. The whole country, as far as the eye could reach, consisted of level marshy grounds, sprinkled with lakes, and overgrown with tall woods of aspen, alder, willows, and other aquatic trees, among which our traveller remarked a species of large birch, with a bark as smooth and white as paper.
Pursuing their journey with the utmost rapidity, they arrived on the 4th of February at Tomsk, where Bell, as usual, immediately set on foot the most active inquiries respecting the neighbouring regions and their inhabitants. From the citadel of Tomsk, which is situated on an eminence, a chain of hills is discovered towards the south, beyond which, our traveller was informed, in a vast plain, many tombs and burying-places were found. His information throws much interesting light on a passage of Herodotus. This great historian relates, in his fourth book, that when the ancient Scythians interred their king, they were accustomed to strangle upon his body his favourite concubines, his cupbearer, his cook, and other favourite personages; and we learn from other authors, that together with the bones of these, cups, vases, and other vessels of gold were deposited with the royal corpse in the tomb. Rites not greatly dissimilar took place in the heroic ages among the Greeks; for we find men and horses sacrificed upon the funeral pile of Patroclus in the Iliad, and Achilles placing the white bones of his friend in a [Greek:chryseê phialê], or golden vase, to be afterward deposited with his own in the same mound.
The tombs discovered in the great plains south of Tomsk in all probability were those of ancient Scythian chiefs and kings; but if so, the spot must have been regarded as the common cemetery of the race, to which the bodies of all persons above a certain rank were to be borne, for the number of bar-
