THE FATE OF ICIODORUM. 181 
THE FATE OF ICIODORUM! 
F you look on a good map of France, you will 
find, a little south of the centre, a small squar- 
ish area, painted red, and bearing the name of Puy- 
de-Déme. Puy-de-Déme is a strange region, made 
up of fertile valleys separated from each other by 
ragged hills which were once volcanoes in Paleozoic 
times. These volcanoes have long since retired 
from active life, and are black and dismal now, 
their faces scored by lava-furrows, like gigantic tear- 
stains dried on their rugged cheeks. In their cra- 
ters are ponds of black water full of perch and trout 
as black as the rocks above which they swim. The 
highest of these hills the people call the Puy-de- 
Déme, — the Cathedral-peak. There is an obser- 
vatory on the top of it, and all the country that 
you can see from the mountain-summit makes up 
the “department” of Puy-de-Déme. 
On the south side of the department, near what 
one might call the “ county line,” you will find, if 
your map is a good one, the little city of Issoire. 
Issoire is a very old town. The Romans knew it. 
They found it when they invaded Gaul, 1900 years 
1 The chief present interest of this essay is perhaps to be found 
in the fact that nearly all the historical events related in it have 
taken place since the date of its first publication in the “ Popular 
Science Monthly ” in August, 1888. ee 
