121 



use the word indignation — at the destruction of those monuments 

 with the express sanction of the ruling powers of the colony — monuments 

 which had survived the ravages of time and war probably for more 

 than two thousand years, and all the barbarism of the various tribes and 

 races of Mauritania and JN'umidia, that have sojourned in, or swept over 

 those regions of northern Africa for many hundreds of years past. M. 

 Belbrugger made me no reply, being, perhaps, fortunately ignorant of 

 the reprisals that might be made on any complaints like mine against 

 the barbarisms of civilization in a French possession in respect to modes 

 of dealing with monuments of antiquity of great value and historical 

 interest. 



The preceding notice, I believe, is the first given in our country to 

 British archaeologists of cromlechs existing in Africa. Of their exis- 

 tence in Palestine they have a knowledge from the following descrip- 

 tion of such monuments in the travels of Captains Irby and Mangles : — 



" On the banks of the Jordan, at the foot of the mountain, we ob- 

 served some very singular, interesting, and certainly very ancient tombs, 

 composed of great rough stones, resembling what is called Kit's Coty 

 House (a well-known cromlech in Kent). They are built of two long 

 side stones, with one at each end, and a small door in front, mostly 

 facing the north : this door was of stone. All were of rough stones, 

 apparently not hewn, but found in flat fragments, many of which are 

 found about the spot in huge flakes. Over the whole was laid an im- 

 mense flat piece, projecting both at the sides and ends. "What rendered 

 these tombs the more remarkable was, that the interior was not long 

 enough for a body, being only five feet. This is occasioned by both the 

 front and back stones being considerably within the ends of the side 

 ones. There are about twenty-seven of these tombs, very irregularly 

 situated." 



The authors designate these monuments, ''oriental tombs." 



But who were the Africans of that region, in the vicinity of the ancient 

 Icosium (the supposed site of which is Algiers), by whom such numerous 

 monuments of the highest antiquity, and so entirely identical with our 

 cromlechs, were erected ? What notices are to be found in our ancient 

 annals of any relations of the early inhabitants of this country with 

 those of Africa ? 



In Keating' s " Complete History of Ireland," translated from the 

 Irish by Haliday, 8vo. Dub. 1811, we find (vol. i. chapters 6, 7, 8, and 

 9), several references to ''African pirates," sometimes denominated 

 Fomorians, who, within a period of three hundred years after the flood, 

 had arrived in Ireland, eventually became masters of all the colonized 

 portion of the island, and were, after a short time of domination, ex- 

 pelled by new invaders. 



In the second section of chapter 2, we are told that " Ireland was an 

 uninhabited desert for the space of three hundred years (after the flood), 

 until Paralon (the Partholanus of other writers), son of Shara, son of 

 Sru, son of Esru, son of Frament, son of Fahaght, son of Magog, son of 

 Japhet, came to take possession of it." . . . " This induces me to 



