Morning journal and courier., 1889-06-29

denoe of having been transported to the spot from very remote points; and many are en- riched by rude carvings both in relief and intaglio. Vast hollowed stones, evidently sepulchra1 urns, are still seen within the huge structure: while gold coin of Valen- tiniau, and one of Theodosius, as well as two ancient gold torques and golden chain and two rings, with the residue of incinerated human remains, have been discovered within this massive sepulcher, which may we'll claim equal interest from tourist and antiquarian with it's no more inspiring brethren of Sack ara and those beside the Nile.
 Ireland is exceedingly rich in pagan militia ry remains. The museum of Trinity college and the rooms of the Royal Irish Historical and Archaeological society in Dublin are great store houses of the most interesting relics of this character to be found in any land. To myself has been more deeply in- teresting the huge rath, lis, cathsir, dun or fort, as it is varieusly termed where the mys- tic people gathered their herds, women and other treasures, and fought for their saving when the world was young. I have visited score or so of the smaller, and three of the greatest, of these--Dun Aengus, on the largest of the Aran Islands, at the entrance of Galway Bay; the Stoigue Fort in Kerry; and the Grianan of Aileach, & few miles from old Londonderry in the north. The Staigue Fort fStaigue an~or, the ''staired palace of slaughter") crowns rising ground in deep hollow surrounded by mountains opening only to the sea, about five miles southwest of the village of Snsem, county Kerry. It consists of 3 circular wall of un- cemented stones, nearls rene thousand feet in circumference twelvS feet thick and from eighteen 10 twenty feet highi. .-Eha single doorway Is composed of unhewn stones with horizontal lintel, and the inner surface of the structure is furnished with regular flights of stone steps leading to the top of the im- mense walls; while great ditch or moat de- tended its exterior.
 On the remotest point of Aranmore, the most desolate of all of Ireland's islands, where the limestone cliffs pitch sheer hun. dreds of feet into the bowling Atlantic, out of sight of single human habitation, and where for centuries no sound more human than the sea gull's shriek or the puf6n's gur- gled whistle has been heard, stand the grim remains of that tremendous pagan strong hold, Dun Aengus. The profoundest arch eeologist Ireland ever produced, Dr. Petrie, pronounces this "the most magnificent bar yet how many Americans ever set eyes upon 1t? Three great walls, the first over nine hundred feet long, twelve feet high and near ly twenty feet thick, at irregular distances apart, form the enclosure, the whole repre- senting little moro than one-half of an ir- regular circle. Between the different huge lines of ramparts are acres of tremendous jagged, spike like stones, pointing outward. an ineonceivably mighty and awful chevaux de friese. The walls of the inner stronghold are still nearly thirty feet high and quite as thick. The legend goes that these stupend- ous Cyclopean defenses and keeps-for on the Aran Islands alone I visited the remains of five other forts, Dun Oghil, Dubh Cathair or Black Fort, Dun Conchover, Dun Onaght and the great Dun of Inisheer-were built by the flying and fated Firbolgs from one thousand to fifteen hundred years before the Christian era. No matter about the legend. There they stand to-day, more weird, sug gestive and overlapping in their dread se- crets of the people that were than ever could lie in the silence of the Libyan Sphinx.
 The mystic Grianan of Aileaeh stands bleak and lone on the peak of conical, de- nuded hill, nearly one thousand feet above the sea, six miles northwest of the city of Londonderry. In the Dinnsenchas I find these lines: