TUMULUS. Tumuli are met with in Wales, Scotland, Ireland, France, Sweden, Russia, Tartary., and Africa. Those in Ireland and in the plain of Troy are precisely shnilar to others of the United States. In America they are scattered in profusion from Lake Erie to the Gulf of. Mexico, and are found in Texas, New I Mexico, and S. America ; other antiquities also l are found in the valley of the Mississippi. Tumuli are not numerous in Ohio, but are found in Kentucky, and more commonly in Tennessee and Mississippi. One of the largest is at Cahokia in Illinois, being a parallelogram 235 yards long by 170 broad, and 90 feet high. Cairns and tumuli are found on the peaks of the Neilgherries. They contain agricultural implements ; and iron spear heads, bells, and sepulchral urns, with figures of coiled snakes, tigers, elephants, dogs, and birds, sickles and gold rings, have been found buried under the piles of stones. It is supposed that the Kurumbar race formerly interred in cairns.
Over vast wildernesses in the northern regions of Asia, along the banks of the Irtish, and beyond the remote Yenesi, innumerable tumuli are scat tered, containing the remains of ancient art and long extinct races of men. Implements of silver, gold, and copper, girdles of the precious metals, bracelets decked with pearls, fragments of porce lain, have surprised the travellers who have seen a few of the tumuli excavated. Similar tumuli, spread over the north of Europe, contain the remains either of the same people or of races more barbarous than the Asiatics. Hundreds of these have been rifled by treasure-bunters, or by mere antiquaries little more enlightened, who have sought to make collections of curiosities without any view to promote science or history. See Barrow ; Cairn ; Cromlech •, St'hupa ; Tope.