At a depth of 15 ft. below the level of the rock, or of 25 ft. below the former surface of the ground, as I found it when I began the excavations, I reached a layer of pebbles, below which I found, at a distance of three feet from each other, the remains of three human bodies, all with the head turned to the east and the feet to the west. They were only separated from the surface of the levelled rock by another layer of small stones on which they were lying, and they had evidently been burned simultaneously in the very same place where they lay. The masses of ashes of the clothes which had covered them, and of the wood which had partially or entirely consumed their flesh, as well as the colour of the lower layer of stones and the marks of the fire and the smoke on the stone wall, which at the bottom of the sepulchre lined all the four sides--can leave no doubt whatever on this point; nay more, there were the most unmistakable marks of three distinct funeral piles. The wall, which at the bottom of the tomb lined its four sides, consisted of pretty large stones joined without any binding material; it was 5 ft. high and 1 ft. 8 in. thick. The small stones with which the bottom of the sepulchre was strewn can, in my opinion, have had no other object than to procure ventilation to the funeral pyres. These could not have been large, and had evidently been intended to consume merely the clothes and partly or entirely the flesh of the deceased; but _no more_, because the bones and even the skulls had been preserved; but these latter had suffered so much from the moisture, that none of them could be taken out entire.