CELTIC REMAINS IN ALGERIA. 79 



— or at least tribes — of men in North Africa erected those struc- 

 tures, (whether for burials or religious ceremonies), which in Great 

 Britain, Ireland, and France, are ascribed to the Celts. If Druid- 

 ical Vates were consulted by the Eomans in Yorkshire, as late as 

 the era of Severus, and in Gaul during the life of Diocletian, one 

 cannot be surprised that those customary modes of burial should 

 continue in use amongst the peojDle whose ancestors had implicitly 

 observed them, even ujitil after the Christian Era, and that frag- 

 ments of Eoman columns should be built in with concentric layers 

 of other stones, in steps, having on the summit slabs placed 

 vertically to enclose the dead. These Bazinas (as the Arabs call 

 them) are sometimes ten or twelve yards in diameter. Lieut. 

 Payen has seen in Mount Aures and the Hodna thousands of 

 cylindrical towers of regular beds of stone, generally surmounted 

 by a large flat stone, under which, in the central kist, skeletons 

 and utensils are found. The Arabs call these towers " Chouachat." 

 At Mount Daourouch, the hill sides are pierced with little chambers, 

 generally cubic ; the entrances to these were evidently shut by 

 slabs or wooden doors ; some still contain human bones and a 

 greasy foetid earth. Circles of stones, menhirs as well as crom- 

 lechs, all of which specially remind us of similar monuments in 

 this county, Wales, &c., are innumerable in Algeria. M. Detour- 

 neux shewed to me his "Two Letters to Monsieur Desors," 

 describing some of them, with accompanying sketches. He speaks 

 of a dolmen at Tarf, resting on hewn stones, in the centre of a 

 circle of rough ones, set upright ; outside these is another circle 

 of squared flat stones, which touch each other. Mons. Detourneux 

 says the stones in avenues and squares are found by thousands on 

 the N. East of the Hodna mountains and in the Bou Arredj section, 

 and that Berber letters, such as are still used by the Touaregs, 

 are seen on stones. He gives a copy of an inscription of four 

 lines on a stone six feet high, the largest of a circle of seven, 

 existing on the ChefFa plain, near the road to Bona, In another 

 instance the inscribed stone is a solitary one. If the Berbers or 

 Kabyles, 700,000 in number, who are the Highlanders of Algeria, 

 no longer use a written language, or construct such monuments, 

 they still erect " menhirs " — upright unhewn stones — as memorials 

 of certain events. Eighty years ago they set up a stone named 

 Tizi Ouquemmon, to celebrate the abolition of women's right to 



