burial-places, and in diluvian beds, over the departments of the Somme
and Seine; besides examining all subterranean localities brought to
light by the works of civil and military engineers, during a period of
ten years. He did not succeed in finding fossil human remains in
the diluvian deposits, but he has produced what he considers their
equivalent: because, among relics of elephants and mastodons, and
even below these fossils, at a depth where no archaeologist had ever
suspected traces of man, he discovered weapons, utensils, figures,
signs, and symbols, which must have been the work of a surpassingly-
ancient people.
Besides his researches in the diluvian heds, he opened many mounds
and hurial-places, Gaulish, Celtic, and of unknown origin, some of
them evidently of extreme antiquity: and he describes successive
beds of bones and ashes, separated from each other by strata of turf
and tufa, with no less than five different stages of cinerary urns,
belonging to distinct generations, of which the oldest were deposited
below the woody or diluvian turf. The coarse structure of these
vases, (made by hand and dried in the sun,) and the rude utensils of
hone, or roughly-carved stone, by which they were surrounded, together
with their position, announce their appertaining, if not to the
earliest ages of the world, at least to a far more remote antiquity than
has usually been assigned to such ceramic remains.
“ In the various excavations made in the course of these inquiries, we become acquainted
with successive periods of civilization, which correspond with the written history of the
country. Thus, after passing through the first stratum of the soil, we come to relics of the
middle ages.; and then meet, in regular order, with traces of the Roman, the Gallic, the
Celtic, and the diluvian epochs. It is always in the neighborhood of lakes and rivers that
we find vestiges of the most numerous and ancient people. If their banks were not the
earliest seats of human habitations, they were probably the most constant, and when once
settled were seldom afterwards deserted. This was owing to water, the first necessary of
life, and surest pledge of fertility; and to the abundance of fish and game, so indispensable
to a hunting people. We may add, that all ancient people had a superstitious reverence
for great waters, and made them the favorite resorts of their gods. On the banks of their
rivers they deposited the ashes of chiefs and relatives, and there they .desired to be buried
themselves. The possession of these banks was, therefore, an object of general ambition,
and became the continual subject of war and conquest. This explains the accumulation of
relics which sometimes covers them, and which, on the banks of the Somme and the Seine,
conducts us from the middle ages, through the Roman and the Gaulish soils, back to the
Celtic period.” *
We have nothing to do now with the comparatively-modern history
of the Gauls; the excellent works of MM. de Caumont and Thierry
may he consulted on that subject: our business is with the Celtic soil,
the cradle of the people, the earth trodden by the primordial population
of Gaul.
Ibid. — Antiquités Celtiques.
“ Here we naturally inquire, who were these mysterious Celts, these primitive inhabitants
of Gaul ? We are told that this part of Europe is of modem origin, or at least of
recent population. Its annals scarcely reach to twenty centuries, and even its traditions
do not exceed 2500 years. The various people who have occupied it, the Galls, the Celts,
the Belgians, the Veneti, Ligurians, Iberians, Cymbrians, and Scythians, have left no vestige
to which we can assign that date. The traces of those nomadic tribes who ravaged
Gaul scarcely precede the Christian era by a few centuries. Was Gaul then a desert before
this period ? Was its sun less genial, or its soil less fertile ? Were not its hills as pleasant,
and its plains and valleys as ready for the harvest? Or, if men had not yet learned to
plough and sow, were not its rivers filled wifi fish, and its forests with game? And, if the
land abounded with everything calculated to attract and support a population, why should
it not have been inhabited ? The absence of great ruins would indicate that Gaul, at this
period, and even much later, had not attained a high degree of civilization, nor been the
seat of powerful kingdoms; but why should it not have had its towns' and villages? or,
rather, why should it not, like the steppes of Russia, the prairies and virgin forests of America,
and the fertile plains of Africa, have been overrun from time immemorial by tribes
of men, savages perhaps, but, nevertheless, united in families if not in nations ? ”
Those circles of upright stones, of which Stonehenge is the most
f amil i a r example, are admitted to be of great antiquity, but no one
can tell how far back that antiquity may extend. They are found
throughout Europe, from Norway to the Mediterranean; and they
must have been erected by a numerous people, (being faithful exponents
of a general sentiment,) since we find them in so many countries.
They are commonly called Celtic or Druidical, but it would be
hard to say on what authority; or, in what circumstances and for
what purpose those mysterious Druids erected them. Having neither
date nor inscription, they must be older than written language;
for people who can write never leave their own names and exploits
uncelebrated. The ancients were as ignorant on this subject
as ourselves; and, at the period of the Roman invasion, the origin
of those monuments was 'already shrouded in obscurity. Neither
Roman historians nor Christian chroniclers have been able to throw
any light upon their unknown founders. Even tradition is silent.
Political or religious monuments, they were probably the first temples,
the first altars, or the first trophies vowed to the gods, to victory, and
to the memory of warriors; for among all people the ravages of war
were deified before the benefits of peace: man has always venerated
the slayer of man. The people who erected them are entirely forgotten
; and they must have been separated from the living generations
by an extreme antiquity, as well as by some great and overwhelming
social revolution, probably involving the entire destruction
of their nation. Being unable, then, to attribute these monuments
either to the Romans or the Gauls, sciolists have ignorantly termed
them Celtic or Druidic; not because they were raised originally by
Druids, but because they had been used in the Druidical worship,
though erected for other uses, or dedicated to other divinities. In like