north, and theottadeni, in imitation of their practice,
had adopted the cremation of their dead, yvhile
adhering to their ancient form of sepulchre. Similar
evidences of the occupation of the locality by
an ancient people have been found all round
Edinburgh.
The skeleton of a woman buried in the same
fashion, with head and feet together, was found on
the eastern slope of Arthur's Seat in 1858, and
within the cist lay the lid of a stone quern or
hand-mill. Of the same early period was, perhaps,
the cist which was found on the coast of the Firth,
when the Edinburgh and Granton Railway was
made, the skeleton in which had on it ornaments
formed of tlle common cockle-shell.
Some graves of a later and more civilised period
were found in 1850, when the immense reservoir
was excavated on the Castle Hill, on the highest
ground, and in the very heart of the ancient city.
On the removal of some buildings of the seventeenth
century, and after uprooting some portions
of the massive wall of 1450, lower down, at a
depth of twenty-five feet, and entirely below the
foundation of the latter, "the excavators came
upon a bed of clay, and beneath this was a thick
layer of moss, or decayed animal and vegetable
matter, in which was found a coin of the Emperor
Constantine, thus suggesting a date approximating
to the beginning of the fourth century. Immediately
under this were two coffins, each formed of
a solid trunk of oak, measuring about six feet in
length. They were rough, and unshapen externally,
as when hewn down in their native forest,
and appeared to have been split open ; but within
they were hollowed out with considerable care, a
circular space being formed for the head, and,
indeed, the interior of both had considerable
resemblance to what is usually seen in the stone
coffins of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
They lay nearly due east and west, with their
heads to the west. One of them contained a male
and the other a female skeleton, unaccompanied
by any weapons or other relics ; but between the two
coffins the skull and antlers of a gigantic deer were
found, and alongside of them a portion of another
horn, artificially cut, forming, most probably, the
head of the spear with which the old hunter armed
himself for the chase. The discovery of such
primitive relics in the very heart of a busy population,
and the theatre of not a few memorable
historical events, is even more calculated to
awaken our interest, by the striking contrast which
it presents, than when found beneath the low,
sepulchral mound, or exposed by the operations
of the agriculturist. An unsuccessful attempt was
made to remove one of the coffins. Even the
skulls were so much decayed that they went to
pieces on being lifted j but the skull and horns of
the deer found alongside of them are now deposited
in the Scottish Museum."*
Many relics and weapons of the bronze period
have been discovered in and around the site of
Edinburgh. Some of the most perfect and polished
of these weapons are now in the Museum at
Abbotsford; and about fifty pieces of swords,
spear-heads, and other fragments of weapons, all
more or less affected by fire, are in the collection
of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, The
swords are of the leafshaped form, with perforated
handles, to which bone or wood has been attached,
and many of the large spear-heads are pierced with
a variety of ornamental designs.
During the construction, in 1846, of that part
of the Queen's Drive which lies directly abol-e
the loch, on the southern slope of Arthur's Seat,
two of the most beautiful and perfectly leafshaped
swords ever found in Scotland were discovered in
a bed of charcoal, and are now in the Scottish
Antiquarian Museum. The blade of the largest
measures 26a inches in length, and IQ inches at
the broadest part. Not fa; from the same place a
cup or lamp of clay and Celts of bronze were also
discovered, and, at '' Samson's Ribs," a cinerary urn.
On the green slopes of the same hill may be
seen still the traces of ancient civilisation, in some
now-forgotten mode of cultivating the soil-forgotten
unless we recall the terraces of the Rhine, or the
ancient parallels of the Peruvians in the Cordilleras
of the Andes. " On the summer evenings, while
the long shadows still linger on the eastern slope of
Arthur's Seat, it is seen to rise from the margin of
Duddhgston Loch to the higher valley in a succession
of terrace-steps, in some cases with indications
of retaining walls still discoverable. It is on the
slope thus furrowed with the traces of a long extinct
system of agriculture that the bronze swords
and Celts, and the ancient pottery already described,
have been dug up; while wrought deers' horns,
weapons, and masses of melted bronze, were
dredged from the neighbouring loch in such quantities
as to suggest that qt some remote age weapons
of the Scottish bronze period had been extensively
manufactured on the margin. Following up the
connection between such evidences of ancient art
and agriculture, Mr. Chambers suggests the probability
that the daisses of Arthur's Seat and the
bronze weapons dug up there qr dredged from the
loch are all works of the same ingenious handi-
" Rc-hisMric Annals of scotknd"
