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locality named El-Kalaa, M. Berbrugger says, — Leaving the village of 

 Cheragas, we come to a road which leads to Guyotville, by the communal 

 district called Bainen, where the Druidical monuments are to be found of 

 El-Kalaa, of which I have given a description in a memoir addressed to 

 the Governor- general, the 22ndFebruary, 1 856 (numbered 14), and which 

 will be soon published in the ^ Eevue Africaine ' " (but which I have to 

 add never has been published). The writer further adds, that in the 

 vicinity of Guyotville is the district of Haouche Khodja-Biri, and on 

 the left of it is the Koubba de Sidi-Khelef. Shaw, the English traveller, 

 he continues, states that he saw from this place certain tombs surmounted 

 by a large stone, in each of which tombs three human bodies might be 

 placed. Shaw's account, M. Belbrugger remarks, applies very probably 

 to the Bolmem of El-Kalaa, 



The precise words of Shaw, in his Travels in Barbary and the Le- 

 vant," foL, 1738, p. 67, in reference to these monuments, are the foUov/- 

 ing : — "We meet with several pieces of Roman workmanship between 

 Seedy Ferje and Algiers ; and near the tomb of Seedy Hallef, another 

 Marabout, we fall in- with a number of graves covered with large flat 

 stones, each of them big enough to receive two or three bodies." 



I regret to say, Shaw's reference to the graves " he saw in this lo- 

 cality, which I have no doubt are ''the Druidical monuments" or 

 '' Dolmens" noticed by M. Belbr agger, is quite as unsatisfactory as the 

 notice of these monuments by the latter gentleman. > ]^or did a per- 

 sonal interview with him make any addition to m}^ information respect- 

 ing the Druidical monuments noticed by him, beyond the facts that 

 they were in every respect identical with the rude Pagan monuments, 

 designated Druids' altars, or sepulchral stones of Druidical origin, exist- 

 ing in Brittany, and that the number of them existing at Bainen long 

 after the Erench occupation of Algeria could not be under one hundred 

 and fifty ; but that a colonist, a Erench farmer, who had obtained from 

 the government a grant of the land on which these monuments stood, 

 had destroyed all of them with the exception of thirteen, which were 

 then in a perfect state of preservation. 



I set out to visit these remains, accompanied by my son. Dr. T. M. 

 Madden, the day following this interview. Although the distance from 

 Algiers to Bainen is only about thirteen miles (in a westerly direction), 

 after leaving Cheragas the road is so bad, and so many detours have to be 

 made after much rain, that the journey in a caleche with three horses, 

 takes nearly three hours and a half, and the distance of it may be set 

 down at sixteen or seventeen miles. To give a more distinct idea of the 

 situation of those monuments, I may state they exist rather more than 

 halfway between Algiers and Sidi Eerruch, where the Erench army dis- 

 embarked in 1830, and about one mile and a half inland to the south 

 from the village of Guyotville, formerly named Ain-Benian on the 

 coast. 



On our arrival at the place where the monuments designated Dol- 

 mens, of supposed Druidical origin, exist, we proceeded to the house of 

 the colonist. Monsieur Mareschal, who is the proprietor of the lands, the 



