Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/641

Rh employed to cut these characters into the faces of the hard rocks. Some archeologists claim that the work could not possibly have been done without the use of metal tools; others assert as positively, and apparently prove their case, that the engraving could have been done by means of stone engravers alone. A determination of this question would shed a certain amount of light upon the age of these monuments, especially as to the age of the particular ones bearing these characters, but this question is unimportant, their antiquity as a whole or as to type being determined in other ways.

Of course, many interesting legends have grown up in regard to these mysterious monuments of the past which are still believed in by

the superstitious peasants. In regard to a group of menhirs in the western part of Brittany near the coast, it is claimed that every one hundred years on St. Sylvester's Eve, the great stones rush down to the sea for a drink of the salt water, and while they are gone, one may find untold treasures of gold and precious stones in the hollows over which they stood. But woe to the over-covetous, who in greed for more delays too long, and is crushed by the great stones on their return. There is a legend also in regard to the origin of the marvelous alignments of Carnac. It seems that a saint was being hunted down by the pagans, and reaching the sea, could go no further. He turned and invoking his miraculous powers stretched forth his hand and turned them into stone. Another version makes them Roman soldiers in line