Page:Rude Stone Monuments.djvu/417

Chap. IX. assert that, with the exception of one group at Saturnia, there are no dolmens in that country. In many respects Italy is very differently situated from Spain. Her own learned societies and antiquaries have for centuries been occupied with her antiquities, and foreign tourists have traversed the length and breadth of the land, and could hardly have failed to remark anything that called to their recollection the Druids or Dragons of their own native lands. As nothing, however, of the sort has been recorded, we may feel tolerable confidence that no important specimens exist; though at the roots of the hills and in remote corners there can be little doubt that waifs and strays of wandering races will reward the careful searcher for such objects. One, for instance, is known to exist near Sesto Calende, in Lombardy. It is a circle of small stones, some 30 feet in diameter, with an avenue 50 feet in length touching it tangentially on one side, and with a small semicircle of stones 20 feet wide a few yards farther off. The whole looks like the small alignments on Dartmoor, and if several were found and the traditions of the country were carefully sifted, this might lead to some light being thrown on the subject. At present it is hardly much bigger or more interesting than a sheep-fold.

The Saturnia group is thus described by Mr. Dennis:—"They are very numerous, consisting generally of a quadrangular chamber sunk a few feet below the surface, lined with rough slabs of rock set upright, one on each side, and roofed over with two large slabs resting against each other, so as to form a penthouse, or else a single one of enormous size, covering the whole, and laid with a slight slope, apparently for the purpose of carrying off the rain. Not a chisel has touched these rugged masses, about 16 feet square to half that size; some divided, like that shown in the annexed woodcut, into two chambers over 18 feet across. To most of them a passage leads, 10 or 12 feet long and 3 feet wide. All are sunk a little below the surface, because each had a tumulus of earth piled around it, so as to cover all but the cap stone."

One tumulus was observed with a circle of small stones set round it, and Mr. Dennis suggests "that all may have been so encircled, but that the small stones would be easily removed by