Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 April 1892 — RELICS OF THE DRUIDS. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

RELICS OF THE DRUIDS.

Interesting Reminders of a Departed Aga and Religious System. There are in England a number of indent ruins which are believed to be relics of the druidical age. The most important of them is Stonehenge (from the Saxon Stanhengist, banging or uplifted stones), a very remarkable structure, composed of large artificially raised monoliths, situated on Salisbury plain, two miles from the town of Amesbury in Wiltshire. When entire, it consisted of two concentric circles of upright stones, inclosing two ellipses, the whole surrounded by a double mound and ditch circular in form. The

outer circle consisted of thirty blocks of sandstone, fixed upright at intervals of three and a half feet, and connected at the tip by a continuous series of imposts, sixteen feet from the ground. The blocks were all square and rough-hewn, and the horizontal imposts dove-tailed . to each other, and fitted for mortice-holes in their under sides to knobs in the uprights. About nine feet within this was the inner circle composed of thirty unhewn granite pillars from five to six feet high. Inside this circle was the ellipse and again a second ellipse and inside the whole a large slab of blue marble, supposed to have been the altar of sacrifice. If this is indeed the remains of a druidical temple it stands an interesting relic of a departed age and a religious system of which little remains but the most meager apd unsatisfactory tradition.

STONEHENGE OX SALISBURY PLAIN.