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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Prehistoric Inderjironnd Chambers. 



The subterranean works called by the people 

 of Poitou " gueriments " are little known, 

 though the tradition of the country assigns 

 their origin to prehistoric times. I purpose 

 to describe one of these which I visited, with 

 my brother, in 1878, and which may be re- 

 garded as a type of the whole series. The 

 chalk of Beaumont, stretching south of Cha- 

 tellerault, resembles a vast ants'-nest, so 

 numerous are the galleries with which it is 

 honeycombed. The one that I am about 

 to describe is at a place called La Fuye, 

 and is only a few hundred yards from the 

 old Roman road between Colombiers and 

 Jaulnay. "We went down into a hole, A, 

 overgrown with bushes, that looked very 

 much like a fox's hole, and came upon a 

 large hall, B, on which abutted the passages 

 G and R. The passages are of about the 



height of a common-sized man, but less than 

 two feet wide. They appear to have once 

 been tightly closed by doors and fortified 

 by beams. After going in about a hundred 

 metres, and making a number of turns, I 

 came to a sudden descent, and fell into the 

 hole K (see the section D K II). When I 

 came to myself, and was able to examine 

 the place, I found that the narrow passage 

 led to a steep ladder of five steps, L, at 

 the end of which was the hole into which I 

 had fallen, about six feet deep. Hence led 

 another narrow gallery, which we explored 

 with great difficulty, but at the end of which 

 wc came to the spacious chamber D, where 

 we found a quantity of large bones, char- 

 coal, and blocks of flint, aud, by digging, a 



badly decayed piece of coarse pottery. Gal- 

 lery E opened out from this passage, but 

 it had become choked up. Returning, we 

 climbed up the passage K with the aid of 

 the foot-holes M M in the wall, and went 

 through the gallery I, into the chamber C, 

 which contained a number of circular pits, 

 J, N, P, suggesting the form of a cistern, 

 but they could not have been used to hold 

 water. The galleries and Q were choked 

 up. Returning to the first chamber, and 

 passing the half-filled pit F, we went by the 

 corridor R into the galleries s, u, t, v, y, in 

 which we remarked two tubes, pierced at t 

 and s, so as to form a direct communication 

 between W and B. The construction of all 

 the " gueriments " is analogous to that of 

 this one. They are cut in the rock itself, 

 and consist of large chambers connected by 

 narrow galleries, and present a striking 

 similarity of aspect to those 

 dwellingswhich insects hol- 

 low out in the trunks of 

 trees. The openings of 

 descending passages had 

 been closed by trap-doors 

 and fastened by wooden 

 cross - beams. Niches in 

 which lights could be 

 placed were cut at con- 

 venient distances. Many 

 " gueriments " communi- 

 cated with a well ; and, as 

 some of the galleries have 

 been wholly stopped up, at 

 some more or less remote 

 period in the past, the only 

 entrance now is by the well. I have only 

 visited three caves of this kind, but I know 

 of a considerable number of them that can 

 not be explored because of the presence of 

 an excess of carbonic acid in them. Trans- 

 lated for the Popular Science Monthly from 

 La Nature. 



[Note by the Editor of Popular Sci- 

 ence Monthly. Strabo, in his accounts of 

 the Siculi around Lake Avcrnus in Central 

 Italy, says : " Ephorus assigns the place to 

 the Kimmerioi, and says they lived in un- 

 derground dwellings which they called ar- 

 ffitlai, and through certain excavated pas- 

 sages passed about to each other, and con- 

 veyed strangers to the oracle, which was 

 constructed deep in the ground."] 



