LOST GALLIC CITY.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 53, Issue 151, 7 April 1933, Page 8

LOST GALLIC CITY.

REMNANT OF HISTORY. A lost Gallic city, hidden away on an unexplored plateau in. tfie Auvergne country, has heen discovered accidentally by the well-known painter, M. Maurice Russet. The city is Gergovia, where Yercingetorex in 52 B.C. inflicted the crushing defeat on Julius Caesar which led to the rising of the Gauls in their last struggle for independence against the power of Rome. It is estimated that it was capable of housing 80,000. M. Busset has for years taken long solitary walks in his native Auvergne, armed only with liis paints and easel. Last March he climbed the lonely mountains within a mile of Clermont until with difficulty he reached a basalt plateau, whose uninviting bleakness has left it undisturbed by the foot of man, probably for centuries. As the artist walked along the plateau he noticed traces of ancient buildings and pottery. Returning secretly day after day he has laid hare in the course of months, stone huts, tbe walls of fortifications on a four and a half mile circle, watering places for cattle, a circular road twelve feet wide, towers gates, bastions and dozens of houses built in the hard dry stone described in Ceasar’s commentaries.