Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/211

feet in height, still armed with their grooved "scramasacs," the pointed spur at the heels, and wearing great girdle-plates of iron damascened with silver. One of these "six-feet" people of the 5th century was laid in a tomb formed of large masses of tuff roughly chiselled, and near him were found the bones of a horse, which had probably been that of the giant, the shoes of which yet existed; they had six oblong holes and were "fullered" (à rainures) (fig. 42). Not far from this many other graves, of the same or an earlier epoch, have furnished horse-shoes; the one we give a drawing of is the smallest, the others are wider in metal, so as to cover the greater part of the sole. This is not an exceptional form, for we have a number of the same kind. In addition, these shoes differ but little from those of the Roman period, and show a continuation of the same manner of shoeing, with the slight modifications the farriers adopted according to circumstances. There are always shoes with six nails, sometimes fullered, but not undulated as in the first period. In the foundation of the church of Moutiers-Grand-Val, built in the 7th century, a similar shoe has been found (fig. 40). To the shoes of certain origin, we add another form which has also been admitted at divers epochs, though more rarely, and appears to indicate a mode of shoeing strange to the country. We give as a type of these shoes (fig. 44) a specimen found on the track of the ancient road from Aventicum to Augusta Rauracorum by Pierre Pertius, and in the valleys of the Byrse, between Laufon and Bâle. They are particularly distinguished by the massive form of the calkins, which appear like a great protuberance a little in front of the extremities, which become sharp. The one repre-