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and their Place in Primeval Archæology.
259

tudes of conquest and population, of vigour and decay, the proximity of various vestiges not necessarily homogeneous, cannot be regarded as indicating their common origin. Likewise it requires to be noticed that Dr. Reboud, who describes the graves in question, distinguishes them from Roman tombs in their immediate vicinity, recognising in them the specialities of what in western Europe are vaguely termed Celtic remains.[1] An additional reason for including them in the category before us, is derived from the circumstance that there was procured from this very district of Djelfa a stone celt, which I saw in the Museum of Algiers. This highly curious relic, formed from an elongated water-worn pebble sharpened at one end and tapering towards the other, of rude manufacture and imperfect finish, is not stated to have been discovered in any of the graves; and the opening of one of them only produced some fragments of bones.

Similar tombs are again met with at Sigus,[2] a short distance from Constantino, the ancient Cirta; and an incidental allusion in the Annuaire of the local Archæological Society points to the existence of primeval megaliths (dolmens) in that province, but I have not been able precisely to ascertain the sites.[3]

The Beylik of Tunis is the conterminous territory towards the East; and I have received personal although not very minute information respecting rude stone monuments in that country. I likewise remember some notice of them in a work on those regions, but I am quite unable at present to recall the reference.

As to the Regency of Tripoli, which comes next in order, certain conjectures advanced in the early part of last century suggested the presence there of what their author, Dr. Stukeley, termed in his own special phraseology, "a patriarchal prophylactis, or serpentine temple."[4] The surmise was based upon a marvellous story current in those parts, which many of the early travellers had carefully narrated, that six days' journey from the sea a petrified city stood in the Desert, with its former inhabitants, their camels, their flocks, and their herds, all in their habit as they lived, but turned into stone. We are now familiar with this legend from the lips of Scheherazade, in the Arabian Nights' Entertainments; but, having been thus localised by the tribes of Tripoli, it excited considerable curiosity in the times to which I allude. Some were disposed to believe it with slight modification; others imagined it might contain some grains of truth, and set themselves

  1. ↑ Revue Africaine, vol. i. p. 29, et ibid. p. 138.
  2. ↑ Revue Africaine, i. 29, note. I have just learned (October 1860) the existence of one or more cromlechs in Kabylia, which has been but recently brought under French rule. See Revue Africaine, No. 23.
  3. ↑ Annuaire de la Sotiété Archéologique de la Province de Comtantine. Année 1853, p. 14.
  4. ↑ Shaw, Travels in Barbary, i. 286.
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