93 
This story, whether true or not, is presented to archaeolo- 
gists, that they may manufacture it, if they can, into a key 
to Carnac. “ Upon reading this event in the old British 
history,” writes my learned friend, “and happening to 
recollect, first, the situation of Carnac, upon the very sea- 
coast of Armorica, and, next, the peculiar number of eleven 
rows of monumental stones, it struck me that the whole 
number of stones having been estimated by unprejudiced 
travellers to have been probably ten or twelve thousand, the 
original arrangement may have been designed to be a 
thousand in each row, making in all eleven thousand. The 
whole might thus be intended to be a great national 
memorial of the tragic end of the eleven thousand British 
ladies.” 
Unhappily for this ingenious theory, this key does not fit 
the rusty old lock at all. It is presumed that the Carnac 
lines are composed of eleven rows, but as I have shown that 
they are in reality three distinct monuments, one having 
eleven, another ten, and the third thirteen rows of stones, 
and that, besides these, there are five or six other monuments 
of a like nature, not one of which has eleven rows, I do not 
think the foundation a very good one whereon to erect such 
a theory. 
There is no doubt that the number eleven has been 
assigned to these lines by careless observation, and once 
stated has been accepted unchallenged by succeeding 
writers. In the same way the three groups have been 
blended into one monument ; for as it is usual for travellers 
to pass the short hour of their visit in examining the avenues 
of Menec only, they are not aware that a gap intervenes 
between each of the groups, and they take it for granted 
that the eleven lines of Menec are continued through the 
other groups as far as Kerlescant. 
It is strange that the local archaeologists have just as 
