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Napoleon III. had the subterranean gallery cleared, and its artificial character was proved by the discovery that massive beams of wood, of which there were some remains, had been used to prevent the soil from falling in upon the workers. It has now been nearly filled up again by the calcareous deposit of the water. This is assuming the Puy d'Issolu to have been Uxellodunum.
Lying in the Correze at no great distance from the Dordogne is the town of Ussel a name that approaches much more nearly the sound of Uxellodunum. But an educated native of Vayrac, whom I chanced to meet months after my visit to the Puy d'Issolu, furnished me with some local testimony which appears to be of value in connection with a subject that has given rise to so much controversy.
A lane from Vayrac led up to the escarped sides of the Puy d'Issolu the Uxellodunum of the Cadurci, according to Napoleon III. and others who have made Caesar's battlefields in Gaul their study. It was April, and from near and afar came the warbling of nightingales. They moved amongst the new leaves of almost every shrub and tree.
Only strategical considerations could ever have induced men to build a town on such a site. The Gauls set the example, and their oppidum was long supposed to have been Uxellodunum, but the controversy has been settled in favour of the Puy d'Issolu. I chose the hour of eight in the morning for climbing the rock of Capdenac.
The peasant told me that his father, while digging rather deeply, had found a skeleton wearing a bracelet and part of a helmet. A visitor to the Puy d'Issolu, many years ago, was allowed to take these remains away, together with a quantity of iron arrow-heads, on his promise to come back and pay 600 francs for them. He never came back.
The most convincing material proof that the two places are the same was furnished by the discovery of the tunnel; but some strong corroborative evidence is to be found in local names. The word puy affords no clue; for it simply means a high place. In the dialect of the Viscounty of Turenne the Puy d'Issolu is pronounced Lo Pe de Cholu.
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