He promised me a rich Julian feast in Besancon, and was
greatly affected when he found that the Englishman could give him
Caesar's description of his native town. He wholly denied the
amphitheatre with which one of our handbooks has gifted it; and this
denial was afterwards echoed by every one in Besancon, some even
thinking it necessary to explain the difference between an amphitheatre
and an arch of triumph, the latter still existing in the town. The
Jesuit Dunod relates that the amphitheatre was to be seen at the
beginning of the seventeenth century, in the ruined state in which the
Alans and Vandals had left it after their successful siege in 406. It
seems to have stood near the present site of the Madeleine.
It was a great satisfaction to find that the Frenchman had himself
visited the glaciere which was the object of my search, and was able to
give some idea as to the manner of reaching it, for my information on
the subject was confined to a vague notice that there was an ice-cave
five leagues from Besancon. As so often happened in other cases, he
advised me not to go to it, but rather, if I must see a cave, to go to
the Grotto of Ocelles,[30] a collection of thirty or more caverns and
galleries near the Doubs, below Besancon.
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