387 The Dolmen-Mounds of Brittany. (January, 
One thing seems almost certain, and that is—that this 
elaborate decoration of the interior of long galleries,* leading 
to sculptured chambers, shows to us that these sepulchral 
chambers were intended to be visited subsequent to the in- 
terments; and this is the more likely, inasmuch as these 
galleries are so orientated (at least 66 per cent are so in 
Brittany) that, at some season of the year, the sun, on 
rising, would brightly illuminate the interior of the tomb. 
Ellis mentions an analogous custom amongst the Hovas, in 
Madagascar, at the present day. He says :—‘‘ The Hova 
chiefs manifest considerable solicitude about their graves; 
and I was told that one of the chief officers, who died lately 
at the capital, requested of his sons, shortly before his 
death, that after his interment they would occasionally re- 
move the large stone slab that would form the door of his 
sepulchre, and let the sun shine in upon him.” t 
Mr. Lukis’s classification of ceiled and vaulted sepulchres 
in Brittany has already been mentioned; he supposes that 
their various forms indicate not merely a prolonged residence 
of their builders in the country, but also a progress in their 
constructive science: thus several of their forms may have 
* Compare Dr. Palmer’s account of the stone houses in Easter Island :—* At 
_ the south-west end of this island, at the sea edge of the Terano Kau Crater, 
are a number, say eighty or more, of houses of great age, now unused, mostly 
in good preservation, which are built in irregular lines, as the ground permits, 
their doors facing the sea. Each house is oblong-oval, built of layers of 
irregular flat pieces of stone, the walls about 54 feet high. The doors are in 
the side, as in the present grass huts, and of about the same size. The walls 
are very thick, 5 feet at least, which makes the entrance quite a passage. On 
entering, the walls are found to be lined with upright slabs, say 4 feet high, but 
not so broad. Above these, small thin slabs are arranged like tiles, overlapping 
and so gradually arching till the roof opening is able to be bridged over by long 
thin slabs of some 54 or 5 feet, which are not more than 6 inches in thickness 
and 2 feet in width. The inner dimensions of the ‘hall’ are about 16 paces 
long by 5 paces wide and the roof is fully 6} feet high inside under the centre 
slabs. The passage leading to it is paved with slabs, under which is a kind of 
crypt or blind drain which extends to the distance of about 6 feet outside, where 
also it is covered with flat slabs, and is of the same dimensions as the passage. 
It is carefully built of stone squared and dressed; it ends abruptly and squarely. 
In these drains, I was informed the dead men heated were kept till required 
for the feasts. Outside the hall, and at right angles to it, are smaller chambers, 
which do not communicate with it, and each of which has a separate door 
from the outside. We were told that these were generally the women’s 
apartments. The upright slabs which lined the hall, and those of the roof, 
were painted in red, black, and white, with all manner of devices and 
figures, some like the geometric figures of the Mexicans, some birds, 
rapas, faces, symbolic figures of Phallic nature, &c. There was no 
appearance of pavement in the halls, and in many of them enormous 
quantities of a univalve—a maritime Neritina—which had been used 
for food.”—Vide ‘‘ A Visit to Easter Island in 1868,” by J. LiInron PALMER, 
F.R.C.S., Surgeon of H.M.S. “Topaze;” Journal of the Royal Geographical 
Society, vol. xl., 1870. 
+ Ex.is, Three Visits to Madagascar, p. 312. 
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