244 Existing Analogues of btonehenge and Avehury. 



arrested for centuries here, though still going on slightly in the 

 caves of Minorca. 



The word Talyots, from the Spanish ataldi/a, watch tower, is 

 admitted by the well-informed on the island to be a modern term 

 applied to these structures by the Minorcans, but to have no sig- 

 nificance, though it seems not far from the purpose. My in- 

 vestigations lead me to believe that these places were depots of 

 valuable articles o£ commerce, in which the Phoenicians traded, 

 that in short they became the great depots of Carthage, though 

 probably established long before the settlement of that city. The 

 cult of Astarte, under the form of the crescent, is more beautifully 

 illustrated in Minorca than in probably any other place, by the 

 delicate curves of the stone ships — a ship being also her emblem as 

 as well as that of Isis, while the numerous tans multiply the three- 

 membered cross (T) of Tyre. 



One more reference to the points connecting these structures with 

 those in Britain. The trilithon seems to have come direct from 

 Africa, as stated ; and examples are still found in this district, as 

 at Marlborough. They seem to me less the construction of Phoe- 

 nicians than of a people conveyed to Britain by them. In addition 

 to the examples I have quoted of trilithous on the old tin-traffic 

 route, one of the very remarkable stones, already described as having 

 a rude cap-stone, is figured by Cambry, in the locality of the tri- 

 lithon I have referred to as given by him in the Department of 

 Isere. It exactly resembles those of Minorca. 



On the question of the two periods of erection for the structure 

 at Stonehenge I do not assume this alone because the materials and 

 dimensions differ ; I give simply as a fact that they do ; but because 

 the handling or workmanship belongs to two ages widely separated. 

 The smaller stones are certainly not local, and are generally con- 

 sidered to have been brought to Britain; upon this I offer no 

 opinion, but, for the following reasons, I believe their erectors, if 

 Phoenician, would have considered them desecrated by the larger ones. 

 They belong to that remote age when no tool of metal was to be 

 used on a sacred monument ; the larger to a rude age, but one 

 laboriously striving after art, however primitive — an age such as 



