Page 251 - Records of Bahrain (2)(ii)_Neat

Topography and archaeology, 1878-1879 577

196 TIIE ISLANDS OF BAHREIN.

at Kutif; Niebuhr, at ICoweit or Grain; and Forster, I
think, probably correctly, at tho bottom of the bay behind
Bahrein.1
I havo been told by Arabs that thoro are many large ruins
on the mainland, and one man in particular told mo that
they had found traces of building stones and pillars at a place
where salt is quarried. The bottom of the Gulf behind
Bahrein has, I believe, never been carefully explored.
To return, however, to the mounds at Ali. On my first
arrival, I went over and round many of the larger ones, and
at last my perseverance was rewarded by finding an entrance
into one of these (under a flat stone near the summit), through
which, lying down, we were just able to creep, and on
getting beyond tho opening wo found ourselves in a long
passago or gallery, which was, however, blocked witli fallen
masonry a few yards in front of us. The roof of this passage
is formed by transverse blocks of flat stone, laid from wall
to wall, about six feet in breadth, the width of the passage
being somewhat less. The walls, where still intact, were
covered witli a coarse-grained hard plaster, and where broken,
showed an enormous thickness of largo stones, welded to­
gether with tho same rough plaster.
From the general form of tlicso greater mounds I should
think they had been pillared circular edifices with slightly
domed or flat roofs. I saw no traco of carving on any of
tho blocks of stone lying about on these mounds. All that
were so exposed were of huge size; but, though every block
bore evidence of having been shaped, they were so worn by
ngc, that no writing, however deep, could have remained.
No doubt, as time wore on, the inhabitants have mado use of
these mounds as quarries, which may partly account for tho

1 Vincent makes Gcrrlia to havo been on the site of tho present Ivatif, and as
to deducing1 Tyrians and Aradians from tho names of theso Gulf islands, says
siniply, and rather unfairly, that it is consonant with tho perpetual vanity of tho
Greeks, who reduce everything unknown to tho standard of their own fabulous
history. I think that this place mny, amongst other reasons, havo drawn im-
portanco from its situation with regard to tho monsoon and tho peculiar winds
of tho Gulf itself, ns woll as perhaps from tho dubouchuro of a mouth of tho
Euphrates ? With regard to this, soo some account of monsoons, etc., in
Vincent's preliminary observations to tho “ Yoyngo of Nenrekus."