are even more modern. Before, however, we venture to speculate on such a subject, we must feel surer than we now do of their extent and their distribution, and know something of their contents. On both these subjects we are at present practically entirely ignorant.
Gilead is almost the last safe resting-place at which we can pause in our explorations eastward in our attempts to connect the Eastern and the western dolmen regions together. But Gilead is two thousand miles from Peshawur, where we meet the first example of the Indian dolmens; and in the vast regions that lie between, only one or two doubtful examples are known to exist. We can creep on doubtfully a couple of hundred miles nearer, in Arabia and Circassia; but that hardly helps us much, and unless some discoveries are made in the intermediate countries, the migration theory will become wholly untenable.
In the course of the recent ordnance survey of the peninsula of Sinai in 1868-9, great numbers of circular buildings were discovered, many of which were certainly tombs; and plans and drawings of some of them have been engraved, and will be published by the authorities at Southampton. But as great bodies move slowly, it may yet be a long time before they are accessible to the public. Meanwhile the following particulars, gleaned from a paper by the Rev. Mr. Holland,[1] will suffice to explain what they are. The buildings are of two classes: the first, which were probably store-houses, were built in the shape of a dome, about 5 feet high and 5 or 6 feet in diameter in the interior. The walls were often as much as 4 feet thick, and a large flat stone formed the highest portion of the roof, which appeared to have been covered, with loose shingle. They had no windows, and one door, about 3 feet high and 112 foot broad. The stones used in their construction were often large, but never dressed, and no mortar was used.
The other kind of ruins, which is generally found in close proximity to the former, often in separate groups, consists of massively built circles of stones, of about 14 to 15 feet in diameter, and 3 feet high, but without any roof. "These," Mr. Holland says, "were evidently tombs; for I found human bones
- ↑ 'Journal Royal Geographical Society,' 1868, pp. 243 et seq.
