This church was no sooner completed than it began to be invaded by the sands, which every year grew higher and higher. The lateral doors had to be walled up, and the pavement raised three times to be on a level with the sands without. Veronica’s fountain was kept open, but soon became a well. The monastery and town finally disappeared under the dunes in the latter part of the thirteenth century. The monks returned when the sands were stayed. They found the church filled to the chancel arch and the capitals of the pillared nave. They removed part of the roof, raised the Avails, and so arranged the church that it continued to be used till devastated by the Calvinists of the sixteenth century. It was hardly repaired before the sands besieged it anew and soon buried it utterly, with the exception of the top of the belfry, which a boy could easily scale, presenting a curious and picturesque appearance on the lone shore. Under Louis XV. the open arches of this steeple became a kind of light-house, and the pines sown by Brémontier soon took root among the arches of the church totally hidden in the sands. Tradition says Soulac was once important as a port, and alive with commercial activity. Henry III. of England embarked at old Soulac for Portsmouth about the middle of the thirteenth century, which shows how extensive have been the sand deposits since. Once the church was so near the water that in great storms the foundations were washed by the waves, though built on a slight acclivity. It appears by documents still preserved at Bordeaux that the sands in 1748 covered the greater part of Soulac, causing the loss of many salt marshes and other sources of revenue. Many other parishes on the shores of Médoc have wholly disappeared. The church of La Canau was rebuilt three times before the moving sands. Sainte Hélène has transported hers ten kilometres, leaving behind what is now an islet with a few trees to mark the spot where it once stood, still called by the people Senta Lénotte, or Ste. Hélenotte—that is, little St. Helen. St. Pierre de Lignan, or, as called in old titles, Sanctus Petrus in Ligno—St. Peter on the Wood, or Cross—said to have been originally built by Zaccheus, or St. Amadour, in memory of the martyrdom of the apostle, which he had witnessed at Rome, has been abandoned two hundred years, and now lies under the waves of the ocean. Pauillac, sung by Ausonius in his epistle to Théon: “_Pauliacus tanti non mihi villa foret_,” is likewise half-buried in the sands.