manner did the temples of Paganism afterwards serve for the solemnities
of Christianity.
We have cited the example of these Celtic temples as a standard
of comparison; for, if their antiquity is so extreme as to he entirely
lost out of our sight, what date shall we assign to human works found
at a considerable distance below their foundations ? In the same soil
upon which these druidical monuments stand,- hut many feet beneath
their base, numbers of those stone wedges, commonly called Celtic
axes, have been discovered; and these, with other similar instruments,
only varying in the finish of their workmanship, according to the
depth at which they are found, have been collected at different levels,
even as low down as the diluvian drift.
The annexed cut represents a section of an alluvial formation at
F ig . 2 0 3 .
A l l u v i a l D e p o s i t e s a t P o r t e l e t t e , showing the Arrangement of the Soil and the Sepultures.
Indicates the level of the actual waters of the Somme, whose depth is
three metres.
I. Alluvial formation.
II. Vegetable soil — covering transported earth or rubble.
III. Calcareous tufa — porous, and containing compact masses.
IV. Muddy sand — blue, and very fine.
V. Turf — containing Celtic antiquities; indicated by = .
VI. Muddy sand.
VII. Detrital diluvium — rolled silex, &c.
VIII. White chalk.
Portelette, on the Somme, where some beautiful specimens of Celtic
axes were obtained. At a depth of nine feet, a large quantity of
bones was found; and one foot lower, a piece of deer’s horn, bearing
marks of human workmanship. At twenty feet from the surface,
and five feet below the bed of the river, three axes, highly finished,
and perfectly preserved, turned up in a bed of turf. Some axe-cases
of stag’s horn were also discovered in the same bed. Hear these
objects was a coarse vase of black pottery, very much broken, and
surrounded with a black mass of decomposed pottery — there were
also large quantities of wrought bones, human and animal. The entire
bones were those of the boar, urus, bull, dog, and horse; but none
of man. In another locality, in the neighborhood of Portelette, the
skull of a man was found. Here was evidently a Celtic sepulchre.
The axes were entirely new, bearing no marks of use, and were doubtless
votive offerings. This case is only cited to show that the same
kind of utensils extend from the comparatively recent Celtic back to
far remoter diluvian and antediluvian epochas. "We annex sketches
of the deer’s-hom axe-cases (Figs. 204 and 205), because in the more
F ig . 2 0 4 . F ig . 2 0 5 .
ancient excavations none were discovered. Fig. 204 is an axe-case made
of the horn of a “ stag of ten,” and is six inches in length, two inches