than Keating, and he quotes Boetius, who obviously wished to sustain the
claims of the Stuarts." The pillar-stone is composed of granular
limestone, but no stone of this description is found in the vicinity. As
may be supposed, there are all kinds of curious traditions about this
stone. One of these asserts that it was the pillar on which Jacob
reposed when he saw the vision of angels. Josephus states that the
descendants of Seth invented astronomy, and that they _engraved their
discoveries on a pillar of brick and a pillar of stone_. These pillars
remained, in the historian's time, in the land of Siris.--_Ant. Jud_. l.
2, sec. 3.

[176] _At once_.--See Petrie's _Tara_, p. 213.

[177] _Roads_.--See Napoleon's _Julius Caesar_, vol. ii. p. 22, for
mention of the Celtic roads in Gaul.

[178] _Chariots_.--St. Patrick visited most parts of Ireland in a
chariot, according to the Tripartite Life. _Carbad_ or chariots are
mentioned in the oldest Celtic tales and romances, and it is distinctly
stated in the life of St. Patrick preserved in the Book of Armagh, that
the pagan Irish had chariots. Different kinds of roads are expressly
mentioned, and also the duty of road-mending, and those upon whom this
duty devolved. See Introduction to the Book of Rights, p. 56.

[179] _Probable_.--The legend of St. Brendan was widely diffused in the
Middle Ages. In the _Bibliotheque Imperiale_, at Paris, there are no
less than eleven MSS. of the original Latin legend, the dates of which
vary from the eleventh to the fourteenth century. In the old French and
Romance dialects there are abundant copies in most public libraries in
France; while versions in Irish, Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish, and
Portuguese, abound in all parts of the Continent. Traces of
ante-Columbian voyages to America are continually cropping up. But the
appearance, in 1837, of the _Antiquitates Americanae sive ita Scriptores
Septentrionales rerum ante-Columbiarum_, in America, edited by Professor
Rafu, at Copenhagen, has given final and conclusive evidence on this
interesting subject. America owes its name to an accidental landing. Nor
is it at all improbable that the Phoenicians, in their voyage across the
stormy Bay of Biscay, or the wild Gulf of Guinea, may have been driven
far out of their course to western lands. Even in 1833 a Japanese junk
was wrecked upon the coast of Oregon. Humboldt believes that the Canary
Isles were known, not only to the Phoenicians, but "