at present. The only people who, so far as we now see, seem to be able to claim them, are the Nasamones. From Herodotus we learn that this people buried their dead sitting, with their knees doubled up to their chins, and were so particular about this that, when a man was dying, they propped him up that he might die in that attitude (iv. 190). We also learn from him that they had such reverence for the tombs of their ancestors that it was their practice in their solemn form of oath to lay their hands on these tombs, and so invoke their sanction; and in their mode of divination they used to sleep in or on these sepulchres (iv. 172). All this would agree perfectly with what we find, but Herodotus unfortunately never visited the country nor saw these tombs, and consequently does not describe them, and we do not know whether they were mere mounds of earth, or cairns of stone, or dolmens such as are found in Africa. It is also unfortunate for their claim that, in his day, the Nasamones lived near the Syrtes and to the eastward of them (ii. 32), and it seems hardly possible that they could have increased and multiplied to such an extent in the four following centuries as to occupy northern Africa as far as Mount Atlas, without either the Greeks or the Romans having known it. They are mentioned again by Curtius (iv. 7), by Lucan (ix. v. 439), and by Silius Italicus (ii. v. 116 and xi. v. 180), but always as a plundering Libyan tribe, never as a great people occupying the northern country. Their claim, therefore, to be considered the authors of the thousands of dolmens which are even now found in the province of Algeria, seems for the present wholly inadmissible.
Still less can we admit M. Bertrand's theory alluded to above, that the dolmen-builders migrated from the Baltic to Britain, and thence through France and Spain to Africa. Such a migration, requiring long land journeys and sea voyages, if it took place at all, is much more likely to have been accomplished when commercial intercourse was established, and the North Sea and the Mediterranean were covered with sailing vessels of all sorts; but then it is unlikely that a rude people, as the dolmen-builders are assumed to be, could have availed themselves of these trade routes.
Still no one can look at such monuments as this of Aveyron (woodcuts Nos. 8 and 122) and compare them with those of Algeria,
