Note 16 — Chapter V · Megalithic Monuments.

Alignments are groups of menhirs set up in one or wore rows. Sometimes large slabs are laid across them, when they arc, called covered avenues. One such alignment at Saint Pantaléon (Saône et Loire) consists of twenty menhirs. The menhirs of El Wad, in Algeria, form long avenues, running front west to east. The Arabs call them essenam, and according to tradition they were erected in fulfillment of a vow made in the hope of arresting the march of an enemy. The tumulus of Run-Aour (Finistère) has two avenues running at right angles to one another.16 This disposition, which is very rare, also occurs at Karleby, in Sweden, and by a remarkable coincidence the length of the avenues (about thirty-nine and fifty-five feet), is the same in both cases. Sometimes such avenues form communications between several dolmens, leading us to suppose that near the chief slept the members of his family or his favorite companions.