Page 407 - Neglected Arabia (1906-1910)

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HHGLiHGTHD ARABIA.

r April-June, 1909.

Letting in the Light.

Mr. Dirk Dykstra.

Some time ago it was my privilege to be invited by the British
Political Agent in Bahrein to be present at the opening of one of the
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mounds famous since the visit of Theodore Cent. At four o’clock in
the afternoon we mounted our donkeys and for two hours rode in and
out among date gardens and patches of alfalfa. The sun was nearly
setting when we emerged from a garden of palms and came upon an
open plain dotted with a hundred thousand mounds. Near the gar­
den are a dozen of the largest, most of which have been opened; while
farther away, as far as the eye can see. are countless numbers of
smaller mounds, many of which have been opened, with more satis­
factory results than the larger.

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MOUNDS AT BAHREIN.
t The more prominent mounds are from thirty to fifty feet high,

and from two hundred to three hundred feet in circumference at the
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• * bottom. About eighty feet from the foot of the mound is a raised
embankment encircling the whole, evidently marking off the enclosed
i space as sacred or forbidden. The material of which the mounds are
made is sand mixed with crushed stone. In the midst of this mass of

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