Tumuli were, a century ago, very numerous in the uncultivated and desert tract of Les Bruyères; but these little artificial hillocks are disappearing very fast, for the peasants throw them down when they wish to clear and level the ground. These tumuli always contain collars in baked clay, arrow-heads, battle-axes of stone, pieces of crystal, and other articles of a similar description.
Even Julius Cæsar, the cruel conqueror of Gaul, the pitiless victor of Vercingetorix--Cæsar, who cut off the hands of the Gauls as the only means of preventing them from fighting--Cæsar admired Le Morvan. He loved that savage country, he delighted in it; in the deep gorges of its mountains he pursued the large wolves and the wild boar, and in it he established the custom of relays of dogs the whole length of the woods.
In this our day, on the summit of a mountain near the one on which is built the town of Chinon, may be seen the thick strong walls of ancient Roman buildings--buildings that have been fortified, bristling with palisades, and surrounded by moats--where Cæsar had his principal kennel, his hunting-box; in short, the spot which, in the third book of his 'Commentaries,' he calls _Castrum Caninum_.
In the darkest and most sombre part of this forest, the lovers of antiquity will arrest their steps, delighted, at the very curious village of Carré-les-Tombes, so called from the immense number of tombs formerly found in its environs. So very numerous were they, that in 1615 the Count de Chatelux, seigneur of the parish, had some of them sawn up to build and pave the present church and tower of the steeple, and also to roof the choir. They were seven or eight feet in length, and hollowed out like troughs. Tradition says they were all found empty, with the exception of five; in these reposed tall skeletons, blanched by time, each having a helmet on his head, and a Roman sword by his side. The stones of three only of these five tombs bore any inscription, name, mark, or sign. On one was a double cross, very coarsely engraved; on the second, a very large escutcheon, which the antiquaries, in spite of their magnifying glasses, their science, and their patience, could never decipher; and on the other, the most curious of the three, a Latin inscription, in a legible, but very ancient character.