Archer, also, when mentioning a very ancient Hindoo temple, at the south end of the fort of Gualior, resembling in shape those on the Coromandel coast, and decorated with much carving, says that “there was a subterranean communication with the plain at the north end, but the passage has been so long neglected as to be impassable.” Am I not justified, therefore, in the conviction, from what I have already intimated, as to the _complicated_ design of those sacred piles, that _our Round Towers_ would be found similarly furnished with subterranean chambers? I do respectfully urge that such is my _firm belief_, and that it would be well worth the while of the learned community to investigate the accuracy of the surmise here put forward. CHAPTER XIII. Another characteristic, to which I would fain attract the reader’s regard, is the circumstance of their being erected in the vicinity of _water_. At Glendalough, what a magnificent lake salutes the Tower? In Devenish and at Killmalloch, is not the same the case? In other parts of the country, also, we find them similarly located. And even where nature has not been so lavish of her _inland seas_, yet is water, of some shape, always to be seen contiguous to our towers. What use, it will be asked, do I mean to make of this argument? or how seek support from the accidental propinquity of this element? Remember my remark upon the article, before, in connection with the Egyptian Pyramids. Captain Mignan, besides, tells us that a tradition, handed down from time immemorial, says that “near the foot of the ruin of El Mujellebah,” which he takes to be that of the Tower of Babel, “is a _well_, invisible to mortals”; and, as all Eastern heathenism, whence ours was deduced, partook in some degree of the same usages and properties, I think it very probable the correspondence will apply in this as well as in other peculiarities; and the rather as from symptoms of vaults, which have already appeared, and the hollow sounds, or echoes, which invariably accompany, the proposition does not come unwarranted, however singly put forth or without something like argument to recommend its trial. We know that in Hieropolis, or the “Holy city,” in _Syria_, where a Temple, with a _Tower_, was erected to _Astarte_, there stood adjacent a _lake_, where _sacred fishes_ were preserved, in the midst of which was a stone altar, which was _said_, and really _appeared_, to float; whither numbers of persons used to swim every day to perform their devotions. Under this temple they showed the cleft where it was said the waters drained off after Deucalion’s flood, and this tradition brought on the extraordinary ceremony now about to be narrated, something similar to which our ancestors must formerly have practised _here_.