Viewing page 23 of 124

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

-2-

instruments, pretending that we were moving a battery into a new position and had to determine its precise location on the map. We did that by sighting on objects of which the coordinates were already known and marked on our battle-maps. The most common landmark was a windmill. One or more of them was always in sight, and naturally they stood on high ground where they were visible from long distances. One of our most memorable views was from a hilltop at Candes, where the Vienne river joins the Loire. The Vienne, there and elsewhere, runs through some of the lovliest country in France. A few miles upstream from Candes you come to Chinon, where Rabelais lived and where Joan of Arc was brought for her first meeting with Charles VII.

The castle is by no means the oldest building around Saumur. The church of St. Pierre, built in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, is worth seeing. But the most antique structures are two dolmens, stone relics of prehistoric times. They are located about two miles ^[[strikethrough]] so [/strikethrough]] southeast, at a village called Bagneux. I have seen dolmens elsewhere in France, but the Grand Dolmen of Bagneux is said to be the largest of them all. It is made of three flat stones. Two smaller ones, matched in shape and size, st[[strikethrough]]to[[/strikethrough]]^[[an]]d edgewise on the ground, parallel and nearly sixty feet apart. The third slab, much larger, [[strikethrough]] was resting [[/strikethrough]]^[[rests]] horizontally across the first two. The whole looked somewhat like a giant's coffee table. The upper slab is 20 meters (about 6[[strikethrough]]8[[/strikethrough]]^[[6]] feet) in length and half as wide. It is six or eight feet thick. Engineers have speculated considerably on how it was lifted into position without the aid of modern machinery. It rests high enough off the ground for a tall man to walk under it. It is commonly supposed that those dolmens had some connection with the religion of the Druidism but that seems to be conjecture.

Herbert Jones and I visited the dolmens on one of our Sunday walks into the country. We took such a walk nearly ^[[every]] week if it was not raining. The others of our party preferred to sleep late on Sundays and to walk in the city if anywhere. Jones and I went not only for sightseeing, but also because we frequently met people on the country roads and tried out our French on them. We had lunch at village ^[[strikethrough]] inns [/strikethrough]] taverns. There were no real restaurants out in the villages, and often we got only cheese or sausage with bread and wine (Jones wouldn't drink even wine). More often we could get an omelet.