OTHEE ANTIQUITIES. 



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very early period— a period, perhaps, as early as the introduction 

 of Druidical rites into Europe. " 



Dr. Meyer, quoted in " The Eastern Origin of the Celtic 

 Nations," by Pritchard and Latham, page 380, writes that — 



" The Celtic nation transported itself from Asia, and more 

 particularly from Asiatic Scythia, to Europe, and to this 

 country, by two principal routes, which it resumed at different 

 epochs, and thus formed two great streams of migration, flowing, 

 as it were, periodically. The one in a south-western direction, 

 proceeding through Syria and Egypt, and thence along the 

 northern coast of Africa, reached Europe at the Pillars of 

 Hercules, and passing on through Spain to Gaul, here divided 

 itself into three branches, the northern of which terminated in 

 Great Britain and Ireland, the southern in Italy, and the 

 eastern, running along the Alps and the Danube, terminated 

 only near the Black Sea, not far from the point where the 

 whole stream is likely to have originated.' ' 



This first route only I shall have occasion to deal with. 

 Along its stream of migration we discover cromlechs and 

 other Druidical remains, first in Circassia, where perforated 

 cromlechs are spoken of by Bell ; then in Palestine near the 

 Jordan, (Irby and Mangel's Travels, Chapter VI) ; next in 

 the northern part of Arabia where a monolithic Druidical 

 temple similar to Stonehenge was discovered by Palgrave* 

 Travelling in Egypt, Strabo saw the road covered with 

 edifices composed like cromlechs of two unhewn stones sup- 

 porting a third. Artemidorus, quoted by the same author, 

 mentions that near Carthage, instances occur of three or four 

 stones placed on each other in the form of an altar or table. 

 In Algeria cromlechs abound. In the " Prehistoric Sepulchres 

 of Algeria," by J. Flower, Esq., published in the Interna- 

 tional Congress of Prehistoric Archaeology, 1868, page 204, 

 is an account of an extraordinary megalithic tomb or crom- 

 lech, the capstone of which is 65 feet long, 26 feet broad, 

 and 9 feet 6 inches thick, which enormous mass is placed 



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