THE BAN-DU-PRETRE. 



129 



promontories, which are parallel and overhang the Lison. 

 One of these promontories, situated in the central axis of 

 the heights, is covered with tumuli and ruins. This place 

 is called the Chateleys, and is an immense tongue of land, 

 which rests on a gigantic perpendicular basement, 164 

 yards elevation. On the margin of this region, at a 

 place called the Champs-Motfets, are seen three Celtic 

 tumuli built of pebbles, and about 33 to 40 feet in 

 length, l\\o of these were opened simultaneouslv, and 

 were found completely empty. The third contained a 

 certain number of thick and short bones, which the 

 osteologists have pronounced to be the remains of a bear 

 of the largest species. In the same collection was found 

 the half of a cloven foot belonging to a stag or buck. 

 These remains of what had no doubt been sacrifices, no 

 less than the vicinity of the place designated Bau-du- Pvetre 

 (priest's ban), were, in our opinion, indications that we 

 were touching on sacred soil. Pursuing our exploration, we 

 reached the extreme point of the promontory of Chateleys, 

 which was occupied by one of those heaps of stones the 

 English archaeologists term cairns. The traditions of 

 buried treasure, which had always haunted this mound, 

 had induced a farmer in the neighbourhood to open it. 

 Quickly deceived in his expectations (he had only taken 

 away, we were told, the foot of a bronze pot), this gold- 

 hunter abandoned the spot, leaving the mound pierced 

 with a large hole at its summit. This opening, which had 

 been made about sixty years before, and about the origin 

 of which nearly every one had forgotten, caused the ruin 



ot the Chateleys to be looked upon as the base of a tower 



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