350 ARCHEOLOGY. 



One of the most surprising considerations suggested by the view 

 of tlie remains of these primitive constructions is the vast amount of 

 labor accomplished by men who had at their disposal no other imple- 

 ments than flint-stones and the brands of their fires. There was an 

 abundance of trees, tall and straight, growing in the forest, but to 

 fell and trim them it was necessary to employ alternately the sharp- 

 ened stone and the fliime, and afterwards, by the same means, the 

 end of the log was to be reduced to a point, that it might penetrate 

 easily into the soil to a depth of several feet. The hewing of the 

 trunks of trees, which were to serve for floors and esplanades, and 

 which were cleft with wedges of stone, in order to form a sort of 

 planks, demanded still more labor than the preparation of the piles. 

 What time and pains must have been expended when it was requisite 

 to level a trunk of oak from 10 to 15 metres long, and to shape it into 

 a canoe ! Some villages, of which we still see the remains, were reared 

 on more than forty thousand piles. It was the work, no doubt, of 

 several successive generations, but for each of these an incessant labor 

 is not the less implied. In addition, "the lacustrians (for it is by this 

 name that these primitive populations are now designated) dug lines 

 of trenches on the firm lands to protect their domestic animals from 

 wild beasts; they reared tumvli and other religious monuments on the 

 heights; at one and the same time they carried on war, the fishery, and 

 the chase; they likewise cultivated the ground, and for so many dif- 

 ferent occupations had no instruments at their command but those of 

 stone and of bone. The fabrication and the repairing of these instru- 

 ments must have required inexhaustible patience, for the stone must 

 be cut with stone, and it is with difficulty that we can conceive how 

 these unwearied artisans succeeded in giving a finish to points and 

 blades of silex. They attacked the hardest substances, and worked 

 even in rock-crystal. 



"The hatchet," says M. Troyon, "played the greatest part in the 

 primitive industry." This implement is found by hundreds on the 

 sites of the ancient villages. Not only was it the weapon of hunting 

 and of war; it served also for the most various domestic uses, and 

 probably never quitted the hand or the belt of its owner. The blade 

 of the Swiss hatchet, most frequently hewn from a block of serpen- 

 tine, is much smaller than that of the hatchets used in Scandinavia 

 during the age of stone, and is of an average measure only of from 

 4 to 6 centimetres. The mode in which the handle was attached to 

 these sharpened stones varied considerably: some were adjusted, by 

 means of ligatures or mortises, at the end of curved sticks; others 

 were made fast to handles of deer-horn. It was as the national 

 weapon that it most exercised the imagination of the workman and 

 artist. Each warrior modified it according to his personal taste, and 

 perhaps ornamented it with feathers and fringes, like the Indian red- 

 skin. Other arms, of less importance than the hatchet, were the 

 arrows of flint or of bone fixed in the end of long reeds; the}^ resemble 

 those discovered in France, in England, and on the banks of the Missis- 

 sippi, but in general they are not so long as those of Scandinavia. It 

 is very probable that the sling was in use. Rough stones also served 



