which preceded it; and, far deeper, of pre-historic races, like our
Atlanteans, who preceded the Gauls. The date of the Roman remains we
know accurately; and from this standard we find that the peat grows
regularly some three centimeters a century, or a foot in a
thousand years.

On the mountain side, as at Cavancarragh, the growth is likely to be
slower than in a river valley; yet we may take the same rate, a foot a
thousand years, and we shall have, for this great stone circle, an
antiquity of ten or twelve thousand years at least. This assumes that
the peat began to form as soon as the monument was completed; but the
contrary may be the case; centuries may have intervened.

We may, however, take this as a provisional date, and say that our
cromlech epoch, the epoch of the Atlantean builders, from Algeria to
Ireland, from Ireland to the Baltic, is ten or twelve thousand years
ago; extending, perhaps, much further back in the past, and in certain
regions coming much further down towards the present, but having a
period of twelve thousand years ago as its central date. It happens that
we have traditions of a great dispersion from the very centre we have
been led to fix, the neighborhood of Atlas or Gibraltar, and that to
this dispersion tradition has given a date over eleven thousand years
ago; but to this side of the subject we cannot more fully allude; it
would take us too far afield.

We have gone far enough to make it tolerably certain, first, that these
great and wonderful monuments were built when uniform conditions of
order, uniform religious beliefs and aspirations, and a uniform mastery
over natural forces extended throughout a vast region spreading
northward and eastward from Mount Atlas or Gibraltar; we have seen,