them, the separation must have been recent, for a barbarian people could hardly be brought to acknowledge the ties and duties of relationship after a long interval of time.[1]
As may be gathered from the table, page 376, or the map opposite page 324, the rude-stone monuments are pretty evenly distributed over the whole of the area extending from the English Channel to the Mediterranean Sea. Our knowledge of them is, however, practically confined to the northern portion of this zone, known as Brittany. The information which is available regarding those of Languedoc and Guienne is of the most meagre description. Hundreds of English tourists have visited Brittany, and many of them have drawn the monuments there and at least described them intelligibly; but I do not know one English book that mentions those in the departments of Lot or Dordogne, and almost the only information regarding them is to be picked up from the local "Statistiques;" but as these are very rarely illustrated, they do not suffice. No form of words will convey a correct idea of any unknown architectural monument except by comparing it with one that is known; and unless both have some well-defined features of style, it is even then very difficult, and with rude unshaped stones, almost impossible, by words to convey what is intended.
It is to be regretted that we do not know more of the southern examples,[2] as they are different in several essential features from
- ↑ The existence of this line of dolmens and of a separate people, all the way from Brittany to Narbonne, may serve, perhaps, to explain the mode in which the tin of Britain found its way across France to the Mediterranean Sea. That the Veneti traded from the Côtes-du-Nord and the Morbihan to Cornwall and the Cassiterides, no one, probably, will dispute. Their vessels, according to Cæsar's account, were fully equal to carrying to France all the metal this country could produce. The road by which it reached Marseilles across France was always the difficulty. In later times, the Celtic trade-route across France was apparently up the Rhone, but on its left bank, and down the Seine, or on its right bank; passing then through Celtica, but round the Aquitania of Augustus, and reaching Britain through the country of the Morini, which was the route Cæsar followed. This does not, however, appear to have been the line which was taken by the trade in tin. It followed, so far as we know, the central line of the dolmen country; and the fact of one people and one language prevailing throughout the whole of that region takes away any improbability, and removes all the difficulties that have hitherto impeded the adoption of that hypothesis.
- ↑ My intention was to have spent last autumn in travelling through the southern departments of France with
