osures of stones which I have described have been
compared to the alignments of stones at Carnac in Brittany and Merivale
on Dartmoor, and it has been suggested that in the olden time these
ancient European monuments may have witnessed religious rites like those
which were till lately performed in the rude open-air temples of
Fiji.[699] If there is any truth in the suggestion, which I mention for
what it is worth, it would furnish another argument in favour of the
view that our European cromlechs and other megalithic monuments were
erected specially for the worship of the dead. The mortuary character of
Stonehenge, for example, is at least suggested by the burial mounds
which cluster thick around and within sight of it; about three hundred
such tombs have been counted within a radius of three miles, while the
rest of the country in the neighbourhood is comparatively free from
them.[700]

[Footnote 678: Th. Williams, _Fiji and the Fijians_, Second Edition
(London, 1860), i. 242 _sq._]

[Footnote 679: Charles Wilkes, _Narrative of the United States Exploring
Expedition_, New Edition (New York, 1851), iii. 86.]

[Footnote 680: John Jackson's Narrative, in Capt. J. E. Erskine's
_Journal of a Cruise among the Islands of the Western Pacific_ (London,
1853), pp. 475-477. The narrator, John Jackson, was an English seaman
who resided alone among the Fijians for nearly two years and learned
their language.]

[Footnote 681: Ch. Wilkes, _op. cit._ iii. 96.]

[Footnote 682: _United States Exploring Expedition, Ethnology and
Philology_, by H. Hale (Philadelphia, 1846), p. 65. Compare Capt. J. E.
Erskine, _op. cit._ p. 248: "It would also seem that a belief in the
resurrection of the body, in the exact condition in which it leaves the
world, is one of the causes that induce, in many instances, a desire for
death in the vigour of manhood, rather than in the decrepitude of old
age"; Th. Williams, _op. cit._ i. 183: "The heathen notion is, that, as
they die, such will their condition be in another world; hence their
desire to escape extreme infirmity."]

[Footnote 683: Ch. Wilkes, _op. cit._ iii. 94 _sq._ Compare Th.
Williams, _Fiji and the Fijians_, i. 183-186; Lorimer Fison, _Tales from
Old Fiji_ (London, 1904), pp. xxv. _sq._]

[Footnote 684: Ch. Wilkes, _op. cit._ iii. 96. Compare Th. Williams,
_op. cit._ i. 188 _sq._, 193 _sqq._, 200-202; Lorimer Fison, _op. cit._
pp. xxv. _sq._]

[Footnote 685: Th. Williams, _op. cit._ i.