The square area in which it stood was sunk below the natural level of the ground, and, like that of the Indian pagoda, appears to have been occasionally floated with water; the drains and conduits being still to be seen, as also several fragments of sculpture representing waves, serpents, and various aquatic animals, which once adorned the basement. The Bacchus here worshipped, was, as we learn from the Orphic hymn above cited, the sun in his character of extinguisher of the fires which once pervaded the earth. He is supposed to have done this by exhaling the waters of the ocean and scattering them over the land, which was thus supposed to have acquired its proper temperature and fertility. For this reason the sacred fire, the essential image of the god, was surrounded by the element which was principally employed in giving effect to the beneficial exertions of the great attribute. From a passage of Hecatæus, preserved by Deodorus Siculus, it seems evident that Stonehenge and all the monuments of the same kind found in the north, belong to the same religion which appears at some remote period to have prevailed over the whole northern hemisphere. According to that ancient historian, _the Hyperboreans inhabited an island beyond Gaul, as large as Sicily, in which Apollo was worshipped in a circular temple considerable for its size and riches_. Apollo, we know, in the language of the Greeks of that age, can mean no other than the sun, which according to Cæsar was worshipped by the Germans, when they knew of no other deities except fire and the moon. The island can evidently be no other than Britain, which at that time was only known to the Greeks by the vague reports of the Phœnician mariners; and so uncertain and obscure that Herodotus, the most inquisitive and credulous of historians, doubts of its existence. The circular temple of the sun being noticed in such slight and imperfect accounts, proves that it must have been something singular and important; for if it had been an inconsiderable structure, it would not have been mentioned at all; and if there had been many such in the country, the historian would not have employed the singular number.