From London to Land's End: and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman"Defoe, Daniel
History
From London to Land's End: and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman"
Defoe, Daniel
England -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800
The form of this monument is not only described but delineated in most
authors, and, indeed, it is hard to know the first but by the last. The
figure was at first circular, and there were at least four rows or
circles within one another. The main stones were placed upright, and
they were joined on the top by cross-stones, laid from one to another,
and fastened with vast mortises and tenons. Length of time has so
decayed them that not only most of the cross-stones which lay on the top
are fallen down, but many of the upright also, notwithstanding the weight
of them is so prodigious great. How they came thither, or from whence
(no stones of that kind being now to be found in that part of England
near it) is still the mystery, for they are of such immense bulk that no
engines or carriages which we have in use in this age could stir them.
Doubtless they had some method in former days in foreign countries, as
well as here, to move heavier weights than we find practicable now. How
else did Solomon's workmen build the battlement or additional wall to
support the precipice of Mount Moriah, on which the Temple was built,
which was all built of stones of Parian marble, each stone being forty
cubits long and fourteen cubits broad, and eight cubits high or thick,
which, reckoning each cubit at two feet and a half of our measure (as the
learned agree to do), was one hundred feet long, thirty-five feet broad,
and twenty feet thick?
These stones at Stonehenge, as Mr. Camden describes them, and in which
others agree, were very large, though not so large--the upright stones
twenty-four feet high, seven feet broad, sixteen feet round, and weigh
twelve tons each; and the cross-stones on the top, which he calls
coronets, were six or seven tons. But this does not seem equal; for if
the cross-stones weighed six or seven tons, the others, as they appear
now, were at least five or six times as big, and must weigh in
proportion; and therefore I must think their judgment much nearer the
case who judge the upright stones at sixteen tons or thereabouts
(supposing them to stand a great way into the earth, as it is not doubted
but they do), and the coronets or cross-stones at about two tons, which
is very large too, and as much as their bulk can be thought to allow.
Upon the whole, we must take them as our ancestors have done--namely, for
an erection or building so ancient that no history has handed down to us
the original. As we find it, then, uncertain, we must leave it so. It
is indeed a reverend piece of antiquity, and it is a great loss that the
true history of it is not known. But since it is not, I think the making
so many conjectures at the reality, when they know lots can but guess at
it, and, above all, the insisting so long and warmly on their private
opinions, is but amusing themselves and us with a doubt, which perhaps
lies the deeper for their search into it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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