[Illustration:  DRUIDICAL REMAINS, STONEHENGE.]

We walked about these great stones wondering how they could have been raised upright in those remote times, and how the large stones could have been got into position, laid flat on the tops of the others.  Many of the stones had fallen down, and others were leaning over, but when complete they must have looked like a circle of open doorways.  The larger stones, we afterwards learned, were Sarsen Stones or Grey Wethers, of a siliceous sandstone, and were natural to the district, but the smaller ones, which were named the blue stones, were quite of a different character, and must have been brought from a considerable distance.  If the ancient Welsh story could be believed, the blue stones were brought over in ships from Ireland after an invasion of that country under the direction of Merlin the Wizard, and were supposed to be mystical stones with a medicinal value.  As to the time of the erection of these stones, we both agreed to relegate the matter to the mists of antiquity.  Some thought that because Vespasian’s Camp was on Amesbury Hill, Stonehenge might have been built by the Romans in the time of Agricola, but others, judging perhaps from the ancient tombs in the neighbourhood, thought it might date backwards as far as 2,000 years B.C.  Nearly all agreed that it was a temple of the worshippers of the sun and might even have been erected by the Phoenicians, who must have known how the Egyptians raised much heavier stones than these.  By some Stonehenge was regarded as the Round Temple to Apollo in the land of the Hyperboreans, mentioned by Hecatoens in the sixth century B.C., and after the Phoenicians it was supposed to have been used by the Greeks, who followed them as traders with the British tin mines.  According to this theory, the Inner Ellipse or Horseshoe of Blue Stone was made by them, the Druids adopting it as their temple at a much later date.

[Illustration:  STONEHENGE.]

“Amongst the ruling races of prehistoric times the father sun-god was the god on the grey white horse, the clouds, and it was this white horse—­the sun-god of the limestone, flint, and chalk country—–­which was the god of Stonehenge, the ruins of which describe the complete ritual of this primeval worship.  The worshippers of the sun-god who built this Temple must, it was thought, have belonged to the Bronze Age, which theory was supposed to have been confirmed by the number of round barrow tombs in the neighbourhood.  It was also noted that the white sun-horse was still worshipped and fed daily at Kobe, in Japan.”

Stonehenge had been visited by Pepys, who described the stones in his Diary as being “as prodigious as any tales as I had ever heard of them, and worth going this journey to see”; and King Charles II had counted them over several times, but could not bring them twice to the same number, which circumstance probably gave rise to the legend that no two people ever counted the number alike, so of