The capital of the Avars consisted of a series of earthworks, which were known (probably to their German neighbors, not to themselves) by the collective name of the _Hring_. Of this Hring an interesting description is given by the monk of St. Gall,[52] who wrote some ninety years after its destruction, but who professes to tell the story as he heard it in his boyhood from an old soldier named Adalbert, who had served in the Avar campaigns. With a charming touch of nature, the old monk describes how the veteran used to prose on about his warlike experiences, and how he as a boy resisted, and often escaped from the tedious tale, but yet was in the end forced to listen and to learn. He says: “The land of the Huns or [Avars] as Adalbert used to tell me was girdled with nine circles. Then said I, who had never seen any circles [circular fences] except those made of osiers, “What sort of marvel was that, sir?” and he answered, “It was fortified with nine _hegin_.” I, who had never seen any hedges except those with which the crops are guarded, asked him some more questions, and he said, “One circle was as wide as the distance from Zurich to Constance [thirty miles]: it was made of stems of oak, beech, or fir, twenty feet high and twenty feet broad. All the hollow part [between the walls] was filled either with very hard stones, or with most tenacious chalk, and then the top of the structure was covered with strong turfs. In between the turfs were planted shrubs which were pruned and lopped, so as to make them shoot forth boughs and leaves. Between one mound and another the villages and farms were placed, always within earshot of one another; and opposite to them the walls (in themselves impregnable) were pierced by narrow gateways, through which the inhabitants, both those who lived in the inner circle and those who were in the outer ring, used to sally forth for the sake of plunder. From the second circle, which was constructed like the first, there was a distance of twenty Teutonic or forty Italian miles to the third, and so on to the ninth, though [of course], each successive circle was smaller than the one before it. And from circle to circle the farms and dwellings were so arranged on all sides, that an alarm could be given by sound of the trumpet from each circle to its neighbor.” It is easy to see that this description cannot be scientifically accurate (the distance between the “rings” especially must be greatly over-stated): but still, this sketch of the camp-city of a robber horde, entrenched in the plains of Hungary in order to make war on the growing civilization of the west, is surely worthy of our attention, and helps us to understand what were the difficulties of Charles and his subject princes in breaking the power of this barbarous race.