chiefly granite and gneiss. The dolmens, which are
of carefully chosen flat blocks showing no trace of work, are all
rectangular in plan, and usually consist of four side-walls and a
cover-slab. The finest of all, however, the dolmen of Fontanaccia, has
seven blocks supporting the cover, one at each short end, three in one
of the long sides, and two in the other. None of the dolmens are covered
by mounds.

Of the _alignements_, that of Caouria seems to consist, in part at
least, of two parallel lines of menhirs, the rest of the plan being
uncertain. There are still thirty-two blocks, of which six have fallen.
The other _alignement_, that of Rinaiou, consists of seven menhirs set
in a straight line. The cromlech is circular and stands on Cape Corse.

On the small island of Pianosa, near Elba, are several rock-hewn tombs
of the aeneolithic period which ought perhaps to be classed with the
megalithic monuments of Sardinia and Corsica.

CHAPTER VII

AFRICA, MALTA, AND THE SMALLER
MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS

North Africa is a great stronghold of the megalithic civilization,
indeed it is thought by some that it is the area in which megalithic
building originated. Morocco, Tunis, Algeria, and Tripoli all abound in
dolmens and other monuments. Even in the Nile Valley they occur, for
what looks like a dolmen surrounded by a circle was discovered by de
Morgan in the desert near Edfu, and Wilson and Felkin describe a number
of simple dolmens which exist near Lado in the Sudan. Tripoli remains as
yet comparatively unexplored. The traveller Barth speaks of stone
circles near Mourzouk and near the town of Tripoli. The great trilithons
(_senams_) with holes pierced in their uprights and 'altar tables' at
their base, which Barth, followed by Cooper in his _Hill of the Graces_,
described as megalithic monuments, have been shown to be nothing more
than olive-presses, the 'altar tables' being the slabs over which the
oil ran off as it descended. True dolmens do, however, occur in Tripoli,
and Cooper figures a fine monument at Messa in the Cyrenaica, which
appears to consist of a single straight line of tall uprights with a
continuous entablature of blocks similar to that of the outer circle at
Stonehenge.

Algeria has been far more completely explored, and possesses a
remarkable number of megalithic monuments. Many of the finest are
situated near the town