CHAPTER IX.
SPAIN, PORTUGAL, AND ITALY.
It would not be easy to find a more apt illustration of the difficulty and danger of writing such a book as this than the history of how we acquired our knowledge of Spanish dolmens. When Ford published his interesting and exhaustive 'Handbook of Spain,' in 1845, he had travelled over the length and breadth of the land, and knew its literature intimately, but he did not know that there was a single "Druidical remain" in the country. The first intimation of their existence was in a pamphlet by Don Rafael Mitjana,[1] containing the description of one at Antequera; and since then Don Gongora ý Martinez[2] has published a work containing views and descriptions of thirteen or fourteen important monuments of this class in Andalusia and the south of Spain; and from other sources I know the names of at least an equal number in the Asturias and the north of Spain.[3] Had this work consequently been written only a very few years ago, a description of the dolmen at Antequera must have begun and ended the chapter. As it now is, we not only know that dolmens are numerous in Spain, but we have a distinct idea of their distribution, which may lead to most important historical results.
With regard to Portugal, the case is even more striking. Kinsey, in his 'Portugal Illustrated,' in 1829, gave a drawing of a "Druid's altar" at Arroyolos, and it was mentioned also by Borrow,[4] but there our information stopped, till the meeting of the International Prehistoric Congress at Paris in 1867, when S. Pereira da Costa described by name thirty-nine dolmens as still existing in Portugal. He also mentioned that as long ago as 1734 a memoir had been presented to the Portuguese Academy enumerating 314 as then to be met with; and though this is doubtful, it
