In the neighbourhood of these stone circles are several bowl-shaped barrows similar to those in the neighbourhood of Stonehenge, not only externally but internally. When opened they were almost all found to contain interments by cremation and rude half-burnt pottery. It is not here, however, that these barrows are found in the greatest numbers. In the neighbouring parish of Sandwick they exist in hundreds, and scattered exactly as on the Wiltshire downs, here and there, singly or in pairs, without any apparent arrangement or grouping. It is said that there are at least 2000 of these mole-hill barrows in the islands.[276] Here, as there, it would seem, that where a man lived and died there he was buried, without any reference to anything existing, or that had existed. None of these barrows have stone circles of any sort attached to them. Indeed, the only rude stone monuments in Orkney of the class we are discussing are those just described, and they are all confined to one remote inhospitable-looking spot. Close to these, however, Lieutenant Thomas enumerates six or seven conoid barrows, whose form and contents are of a very different nature. The bodies in them had been buried entire without cremation, and with their remains were found silver torques and other ornaments, similar as far as can be made out--none are engraved--to those found in Skail Bay, along with coins of Athelstane, 925, and of the Caliphs of Bagdad, of dates from 887 to 945.[277] That these conoid graves here, as well as others found in the islands, are of Scandinavian origin, can hardly be doubted, and their juxtaposition to the circles is at least suggestive. If the circles were monuments of the Celts, whom they despised, and in fact had even then exterminated, they would hardly choose a burying-place so close to them. * * * * * The most important, however, of all the tumuli, not only in this neighbourhood, but in the islands, is known as the Maes-Howe. It was opened in 1861, in the presence of a select party of antiquaries from Edinburgh, who had hoped from its external appearance to find it intact: in this, however, they were disappointed. It would seem that men of the same race as those who erected it, but who in the meanwhile had been converted to Christianity, had apparently in the middle of the twelfth century broken into this sepulchre of their Pagan forefathers, and despoiled it of its contents. As some compensation for this, they have written their names in very legible Runes on the walls of the tomb, and recorded, in short sentences, what they knew and believed of its origin.[278]