o give, the Monk of St. Gall declares that he wrote
down from the words of an eye-witness, Adelbart by name, who took part
in the expedition. But one cannot help thinking that either this
eye-witness mingled a strong infusion of imagination with his vision, or
that the monk added fiction to his facts, with the laudable purpose of
making an attractive story. Such as it is, we give it, without further
comment.

Nine concentric circles of palisaded walls, says the garrulous old monk,
surrounded the country of the Avars, the outer one enclosing the entire
realm of Hungary, the inner ones growing successively smaller, the
innermost being the central fortification within which dwelt the Chagan,
with his palace and his treasures. These walls were made of double rows
of palisades of oak, beech, and pine logs, twenty feet high and twenty
feet asunder, the interval between them being filled with stone and
lime. Thus was formed a great wall, which at a distance must have
presented a singular appearance, since the top was covered with soil and
planted with bushes and trees.

The outermost wall surrounded the whole country. Within it, at a
distance of twenty Teutonic, or forty Italian, miles, was a second, of
smaller diameter, but constructed in the same manner. At an equal
distance inward was a third, and thus they continued inward, fortress
after fortress, to the number of nine, the outer one rivalling the
Chinese wall in extent, the inner one--the _ring_, as it was
called--being of small diameter, and enclosing a central space within
which the Avars guarded the accumulated wealth of centuries of conquest
and plunder.

The only places of exit from these great palisaded fortifications were
very narrow gates, or sally-ports, opening at proper intervals, and well
guarded by armed sentinels. The space between the successive ramparts
was a well-wooded and thickly-settled country, filled with villages and
homesteads, so close together that the sound of a trumpet could be heard
from one to the other, and thus an alarm from the exterior be conveyed
with remarkable rapidity throughout the whole land.

This and more the veracious Monk of St. Gall tells us. As to believing
him, that is quite another matter. Sufficient is told by other writers
to convince us that the country was guarded by strong and singular
defences, but the nine concentric circles of breastworks, surpassing the
Chinese wall in length and size, the reader is quite privi