OCR Text |
Show IBr Ij DIGGING UP CAESAR'S CAMP. jB Thc scene of the discoveries now 7 attracting universal attention in f J -brance Is the curious. Isolated Mont W ! Auxols In Burgundy. Here, as Is now H ' Known, ocyond the possibility of doubt. M'j Julius Caesar performed his most J M wonderful exploit, for Mont Auxois has ( ffi proved to the famous Alosla of the - iR De Bn Galileo. tfor half a contury I tho .majority of historians' Tiavo been disposed to regard Stout Auxois as probably identical with Alesia, but tho "question has remained open, as t there were several rival claimants, particularly Alaise In Fianche-Comte. ; and at times the controversy has "waxed warm. Now. however, there can no longer be any doubt. Recent excavations have not only settled the quostion of site, but they have resulted result-ed In discoveries entirelymcxpcctcd and of thc most Interesting character. charac-ter. Even the name has clung to the place, in changing forms, for 2,000 years, and it ma- not be read In that of Allse-Salntc-Rclne, a Htt.e picturesque, pictur-esque, old town, which hangs high on the shoulder of the historic mountain. moun-tain. At Alesia, where im conquest of Gaul was virtually completed, Cae-I Cae-I Bar, with an army of scarcely 50,000 1 men, held S0.000 Gauls in a grip of Iron and at the same time and with precisely thc same force beat off and annhilated a rescuing host of 250,000. This feat of arms, accomplished twenty centuries ago, and unparalleled unparal-leled in tho annals of war, now rises Into vivid reality by thc visitor, who crumbles under his foot the very soil I that was cast up b- the entrenching tools of the legionaries and grasps In his hand the weapons that they and their enemies fought with swords, lance-heads, javelin points, bucklers, and the strange Iron hooks (the stim-' stim-' H. of the Commentaries) which were i sowed on the ground In front of the j Rpman 'works to"catch the-feet of the ! assailants. More than a thousand i pieces of bronze and silver money, which must have been In the pockets pock-ets of theeonjbatants, have been X found in and around the buried fosses where the fighting was fiercest. There i I is probably no other known battle ft ground which makes history start into f life as does this one. Standing on the t j height above, as In tho gallery of a j I theater, one has thc entire scene be- 1 1 fore the eyes exactly as It was de- 18 scribed by Caesar, and ft Is no diffi- l j cult feat of imagination to seo thc i .great Imperiator himself, In his scar- 1? let .cloak, with bared head, hurrying 8 across thc smokeless plain amid thc It reverberating cheers of his men, and K by the magic of his presence and his yj personal exertions turning defeat into m victory. From that moment ho was ' "the foremost man of all this world." Wm And there, too, fought Mark Antony fllti the Antony of Shakespeare winning fc jj under the master soldier's eye laurels W -which he was afterward to drop at V Cleopatra's feet, Garret P. Serviss in ; Harper's "Weekly. |