CHAPTER III.

CARNAC.


The field of Carnac is a large, open space where eleven rows of black
stones are aligned at symmetrical intervals. They diminish in size as
they recede from the ocean. Cambry asserts that there were four thousand
of these rocks and Fréminville has counted twelve hundred of them. They
are certainly very numerous.

What was their use? Was it a temple?

One day Saint Cornille, pursued along the shore by soldiers, was about
to jump into the ocean, when he thought of changing them all into stone,
and forthwith the men were petrified. But this explanation was good only
for fools, little children, and poets. Other people looked for better
reasons.

In the sixteenth century, Olaüs Magnus, archbishop of Upsal (who,
banished to Rome, wrote a book on the antiquities of his country that
met with widespread success except in his native land, Sweden, where it
was not translated), discovered that, when these stones form one long,
straight row, they cover the bodies of warriors who died while fighting
duels; that those arranged in squares are consecrated to heroes that
perished in battle; that those disposed in a circle are family graves,