According to Mr. Innes, the ruins of eight or nine cairns can still be distinguished, though the whole of the little valley or depression in which they are situated seems strewn with blocks which may have belonged to others, but which the advancing tide of cultivation has swept away. The most perfect of those now remaining are three at the western end of the valley, the two outer and larger cairns stand about 100 yards apart. They are of stone, about 70 feet in diameter, surrounded by a circle of upright stones measuring 100 feet across. The intermediate one is smaller, being only 50 feet, with a circle 80 feet in diameter.[306] The two extreme ones have been opened, and found to contain circular chambers about 12 feet in diameter, and 9 in height, with passages leading to them about 15 feet long and 2 feet wide; and in two or three instances the stones in them were adorned with cup-marking, though it does not appear that they were otherwise sculptured.[307] In that to the west two sepulchral urns were found, just below the level of the original soil. They were broken, however, in extracting them; and they do not appear to have been put together again or drawn, so that no conclusions can be deduced from them as to the age of the cairns. [Illustration: 91. Plan of Clava Mounds. From Ordnance Survey. 25 inch scale.] [Illustration: 92. View of Clava Mounds. From a drawing by Mr. Innes.] Meagre as this information is, it is sufficient to show that Clava does not mark a battle-field. Carefully-constructed chambers with horizontally-vaulted roofs are not such monuments as soldiers erect in haste over the graves of their fallen chiefs. It evidently is a cemetery; and, with the knowledge we have acquired from the examination of those in Ireland, there cannot be much hesitation in ascribing it to that dynasty which was represented by King Brude, when St. Columba, in the sixth century, visited him in his "Munitio," on the banks of the Ness.[308] If King Brude were really converted to Christianity by Columba, it is by no means improbable that the small square enclosure at the west end of the "heugh," which is still used as the burying-place of Pagan, or at least unbaptized babies, marked the spot where he and his successors were laid after the race had been weaned from the more noble burial-rites of their forefathers. It would be extremely interesting to follow out this inquiry further, if the materials existed for so doing; as few problems are more perplexed, and at the same time, of their kind, more important, than the origin of the Picts, and their relations with the Irish and the Gaels. Language will not help us here: we know too little of that spoken by the Picts; but these monuments certainly would, if any one would take the trouble to investigate the question by a careful comparison of all those existing in Scotland and Ireland. [Illustration: 93. Stone at Coilsfield.]