XXVI. Some Account of the Burial-places of the antient Tartars. In a Letter to the Rev. John Glen King, D.D. By the Rev. William Tooke, F.R.S. Chaplain to the English Factory at St. Petersburg

Extract

In compliance with your request to communicate to you what I can find concerning the old sepulchres seen in the southern parts of Russia and in Siberia, I send you some reasons which render it probable that they are all the work of one and the same nation, however opposite a judgment those may pass who have bestowed on them only a cursory attention. Every thing that relates to the customs of the various societies mankind have formed is a proper subject of research to the inquisitive mind. The repositories of the dead have in all ages been objects of regard; at first as honourable testimonies of human sentiment and in aftertimes as a ground of investication into the manners and opinions of men.