The Republic of Scotland

fashioned that the part of the upper stone inserts itself into the lower, so that the whole work, mutually embraced and supporting itself by the weight of the stones, gathers itself little by little from bottom to top into a narrow space. The uppermost part is open. The common people invent different uses and authors for that building, each according to his own fancy. I myself, however, was at one time led by conjecture to believe that it had been a temple of Terminus, which (as we have received) was accustomed to be built round and open at the top. The nearby Duni Pacis also seemed to aid my conjecture somewhat, as if peace were made there, of which these hills were a monument, because the Romans had established there the boundary of their dominion. Nor would any other thing have led me away from this opinion, had I not learned from men worthy of belief that in a certain island there are several such buildings: the others, indeed, similar to the small structure which we mentioned, except that they were larger and more spacious. Two chapels of a similar form are likewise in Ross. That matter forced me to suspend judgment and to judge that these are monuments of deeds performed, and above all trophies, and set up almost outside the orb of the earth so that they might be safe from the injury of enemies. But certainly, whether these are trophies, or (as some suspect)