346 ARCHEOLOGY. 



their chronoloj;y and the story of their deeds seem to live anew when 

 we make the discovery of their habitations, of the thousand objects 

 with which their daily life was familiar, of the very articles on which 

 they subsisted. Has not that history of Assyria, which seemed so 

 remote, been reanimated by means of the bas-reliefs and winged bulls 

 of Nimroud, and is not an image of Roman society recalled through 

 the excavations Avliich have restored Pompeii? Unhappily, traces of 

 the successive populations which have inhabited Gaul are rarely to 

 be met with in places where we might especially have hoped to find 

 them. It is not on the rich and fertile plains, nor on the banks of 

 the great rivers, where the potent communities of Gaul Avere hereto- 

 fore established, that we must seek the remains of the habitations of 

 our fathers. Their destroyed cities have been succeeded by so many 

 others richer and more populous, the soil has been so often turned 

 over and over, ruins have been so repeatedly mingled with older 

 ruins, that all remains of the ancient occupation have mouldered into 

 dust; time and man have labored in concert to efface every vestige. 

 In order to surprise the secret of those elder populations we must 

 explore the barren tracts wdiere habitations have been always thinly 

 scattered, above all, the forest districts which invited the hunter, but 

 offered no inducements to agricultural colonists when conquest had 

 once deprived them of their primitive inhabitants. While the more 

 historic regions of our country scarcely present any remains older 

 than the Gallo-Roman epoch, the heaths of Brittany and the wooded 

 vales of Poitou have preserved their clolmeMS and their ranges of men- 

 hirs ; the sterile downs of central France exhibit their fosses a loups, 

 marges, or mardelles, which formed the under-ground story of the 

 Gallic houses; and when we penetrate into the deep pine woods of 

 the Landes we are surprised at the sight of the vast dotes hollowed 

 in the earth and left untenanted since the day when some invasion of 

 Celts or Basques drove away the occupants. Solitude has protected 

 these retreats of a people which no longer exists. 



The interior of the soil has preserved, in great number and still 

 better than the forests and the wolds, evidences of the sojourn of our 

 ancestors. Many natural and artificial caverns are rich in Gallic anti- 

 quities. Beds of alluvium, lightly deposited by flowing waters, em- 

 bosom remains of human industry, and form, as it were, an immense 

 museum, -which modern explorations have as yet scarcely disturbed. 

 Even lakes and rivers hide under their crystal or turbid expanse 

 genuine archaslogical treasures consisting of all the objects abandoned 

 by the rij)arian tribes. Certain researches made in Ireland had already 

 given an idea of what might be expected from the scientific explora- 

 tion of lakes, when accident threw the savans of Switzerland upon 

 the track of the most important discoveries. Thanks to them, and 

 especially to M. Troyon, their principal interpreter, the field of our 

 knowledge has been singularly enlarged : a lost population has been 

 discovered in the lacustrian basins of the Alps and the Jura. We 

 have here no fact of simply national interest; it is the best established 

 indication which science possesses for the ancient history of western 

 Europe. Although the localities of these discoveries oblige the 



