he holy bracelets, the metal girdle, the sacrificial axe, the
knife of brass; and, in the midst, was a glass urn, containing a pinch
or two of grey powder--human dust! proud dust--sad and last remnant of
the Druid Chindonax.

Tumuli were, a century ago, very numerous in the uncultivated and desert
tract of Les Bruyeres; but these little artificial hillocks are
disappearing very fast, for the peasants throw them down when they wish
to clear and level the ground. These tumuli always contain collars in
baked clay, arrow-heads, battle-axes of stone, pieces of crystal, and
other articles of a similar description.

Even Julius Caesar, the cruel conqueror of Gaul, the pitiless victor of
Vercingetorix--Caesar, who cut off the hands of the Gauls as the only
means of preventing them from fighting--Caesar admired Le Morvan. He
loved that savage country, he delighted in it; in the deep gorges of its
mountains he pursued the large wolves and the wild boar, and in it he
established the custom of relays of dogs the whole length of the woods.

In this our day, on the summit of a mountain near the one on which is
built the town of Chinon, may be seen the thick strong walls of ancient
Roman buildings--buildings that have been fortified, bristling with
palisades, and surrounded by moats--where Caesar had his principal
kennel, his hunting-box; in short, the spot which, in the third book of
his 'Commentaries,' he calls _Castrum Caninum_.

In the darkest and most sombre part of this forest, the lovers of
antiquity will arrest their steps, delighted, at the very curious
village of Carre-les-Tombes, so called from the immense number of tombs
formerly found in its environs. So very numerous were they, that in 1615
the Count de Chatelux, seigneur of the parish, had some of them sawn up
to build and pave the present church and tower of the steeple, and also
to roof the choir. They were seven or eight feet in length, and hollowed
out like troughs. Tradition says they were all found empty, with the
exception of five; in these reposed tall skeletons, blanched by time,
each having a helmet on his head, and a Roman sword by his side. The
stones of three only of these five tombs bore any inscription, name,
mark, or sign. On one was a double cross, very coarsely engraved; on the
second, a very large escutcheon, which the antiquaries, in spite of
their magnifying glasses, their science, and their patience, could never
decipher; and on the other, the m