Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/151

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TUMULI OF ALESIA.
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twelve more), one of which was furnished with a short iron sword (figure 7) and bronze scabbard, and which were probably the remains of the chariot driver and the warrior, the principal iron-work of an 'essedum' was found. This consisted of eight cylindrical iron boxes with their nails yet adhering, and which had served as mountings to the ends of the axletrees;

four iron hoops almost entire, one of which was found in a perpendicular position in the ground. From the traces of wood yet remaining on their entire inner surface, there is reason to believe that they were fixed on the massive wooden wheel the ancients called a tympanum, from its resemblance to a drum-head. The imprints of wheels on the Celtic roads corresponded exactly with the appearance presented by the débris of the chariots exhumed from these tumuli. Taking the maximum of the diameter of the wheels, this was supposed to be about 37 inches, minim. 31 inches for the wide wooden ones; the thickness of the felloes was from 1 to 1½ inches. These remains of the car showed workmanship not coarse and heavy, as we might suppose, but fine, light, and very advanced. Most important, however, was the discovery, beside the relics of a horse, of two pieces of a bronze