a-rama, erected by Mahasen, A.D. 330:--

"It still rises to the height of 249 feet, and is clothed to the summit
with trees of the largest size. The solid mass of masonry in this vast
mound is prodigious. Its diameter is 360 feet, and its present height
(including the pedestal and spire) 249 feet, so that the contents of the
semicircular dome of brickwork and the platform of stone, 720 feet
square, and 14 feet high, exceed 20,000,000 of cubical feet. Even with
the facilities which modern invention supplies for economising labour,
the building of such a mass would at present occupy five hundred
bricklayers from six to seven years, and would involve an expenditure of
at least a million sterling. The materials are sufficient to raise
eight thousand houses, each with 20 feet frontage, and these would form
thirty streets half a mile in length. They would construct a town the
size of Ipswich or Coventry; they would line an ordinary railway tunnel
20 miles long, or form a wall one foot in thickness and 10 feet in
height, reaching from London to Edinburgh. In the infancy of art, the
origin of these `high places' may possibly have been the ambition to
expand the earthen mound which covered the ashes of the dead into the
dimensions of the eternal hills--the earliest altars for adoration and
sacrifice. And in their present condition, alike defiant of decay and
triumphant over time, they are invested with singular interest as
monuments of an age before the people of the East had learned to hollow
caves in rocks, or elevate temples on the solid earth." Having somewhat
satisfied my curiosity, I felt that I should not delay a moment longer
in trying to find my way back to my friends. How this was to be
accomplished I could not tell. I tried to get Solon to lead the way,
but though he wagged his tail and looked very wise when I spoke to him,
running on ahead a short distance, he always came back again to my
heels, and evidently did not know more about the matter than I did. The
affair was now growing somewhat serious. Nowell would, I had no doubt,
be wandering about searching for me, and Mr Fordyce could not fail to
be excessively anxious at our not returning. To start off again through
the forest in the expectation of falling in with them seemed worse than
useless. We might be wandering about day after day, searching for each
other in vain, till all our ammunition was expended, and might easily
then fall victims to rogue