“The bodies exposed to view at Bordeaux, in the cavern situated beneath the tower of Saint Michel, were deposited there in 1793, nearly in the same state in which they appear at present, they came from the sepulchres of the church and the adjoining cemetery. A great number of bones, and the wreck of soft parts, dried and preserved like the whole bodies, form a layer of seventeen or eighteen feet, upon which are supported the inferior extremities of seventy subjects, arranged in a circle around the wall, and retained in a vertical position by the cords which bind them. Some of these, they say, had remained in the earth many centuries, others from sixty to eighty years or more. “During our visit, 25th August, 1837, we determined to examine with care the state of these bodies, those of the middle, where they had remained for more than forty years, and above all, we procured strips of skin and muscle, in order to examine them at leisure, and to submit them to some chemical re-agent, which might reveal to us the presence of the preservative element. We could not hope to collect any of the earth that had originally covered them, since they were superposed on remnants thrown into this place at the time they were enclosed here. “After having furnished ourselves with a thermometer at 24° R., and a hygrometer at 34°, both in the open air, we descended thirty or forty steps, which conducted us to the cave. The coolness did not appear to us very striking, as it commonly is at this depth during the heat of the dog-star. Placing our instruments on the soil, we proceeded to examine the bodies. “It is an extraordinary aspect, by lamp-light, offered by this circular space, the walls of which are tapistried by dead bodies all standing erect; the eye wanders from one to the other involuntarily, and we view the whole before confining ourselves to details. Although the most of them are in the attitude of the buried dead, some differences in size, in the position and expression of the physiognomy, produce a strange and confused impression. There is one point, however, where our regards were particularly attracted, where the heart is chilled and troubled with deep emotion--here is beheld a miserable creature in a position violently contracted--the mouth open and horribly contracted, the inferior members strongly drawn to the body--the arms, one twisted by convulsions is thrown over the head, the other folded beneath the trunk, and fixed to the thigh by the nails, which are deeply implanted in the flesh; the forced inflexion of the whole body, gives the expression of ineffable pain, all announcing a violent death. Unfortunate wretch! had he died in this state, or rather, had he been buried alive, and assumed this position in the horrible agonies of awakening?