During the visit which the Archduke Ferdinand paid, in 1819, to the

Magdalena Grotto, the most remarkable parts of the cave were brilliantly

illuminated, so as to produce a magical effect. Charon’s boat, issuing

from a dark recess, came gliding along over the black surface of the

pool. The grim ferryman drew up his net before the august visitors, and

presented them with six Protei that had been entangled in its meshes.

Dr. Schmidl mentions part of the subterranean river in the Planina Cave,

1,715 fathoms from the entrance, as the spot where the Protei are most

abundant. Near to a small cascade which the rivulet here forms over a

reef, the waters absolutely swarm with them, and the light-coloured

animals, darting about in all directions in the dark stream, afford a

strange and picturesque spectacle. As the cavern is of most difficult

access, they here enjoy a tranquillity rarely disturbed, and no doubt

they have many other still more hidden retreats, to which man is

incapable of penetrating. The best method for transporting the Proteus

is now perfectly understood, and living specimens have been conveyed as

far as Russia, Hungary, and Scotland. All that they need is a frequent

supply of fresh water, and a careful removal of all light. Their food

need cause no trouble, as the water contains all they require. It is

recommended to lay a piece of stalactite from their native grotto in the

vase in which they are transported. When resting or sleeping, they then

coil themselves round the stone, as if tenderly embracing it. In this

manner they have already been kept above five years out of their

caverns. The guides to the Grotto of Adelsberg have always got a supply

on hand, and sell them for about two florins a-piece.

On turning our attention from the grottoes of Carniola to those of the

New World, we find, in the vast Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, a no less

interesting animal creation, which, though different from that of the

Austrian caverns, still shows a certain family resemblance, and affords

another proof that a similarity of external circumstances always

produces analogous forms of organic life. Thus, the two blind beetles

which are found in the Mammoth Cave belong to the same genera

(_Anophthalmus_ and _Adelops_) that have also their representatives in

the Grotto of Adelsberg. The largest insect is here a species of

cricket, with enormously long antennæ; there are also two small white

eyeless spiders and a few crustaceans. The Mammoth Cave has no

proteiform reptile to boast of, but a peculiar blind rat and a peculiar

blind fish.

The cavern rat, which is tolerably numerous, but which, on account of

its remarkable timidity, seldom shows itself, differs from the common or

Norway rat, by its bluish colour, its white abdomen, neck, and feet, and

its soft hair. It has large black eyes, like those of a rabbit, but

entirely destitute of an iris, and uncommonly long whiskers, as if

Nature had wished to indemnify it for the loss of sight by a more

perfect development of the sense of touch. Although the eyes of this rat

are large and brilliant, yet Professor Silliman convinced himself of

their perfect insensibility to light. All proof is wanting that it ever

visits the upper world.

[Illustration: BLIND FISH (AMBLYOPSIS SPELÆUS).]

The blind fish (_Amblyopsis spelæus_) is now become tolerably rare from

its having been so frequently fished out of the Lethe stream, as the

subterranean river of the Mammoth Cave is called. Many physiologists

have already made it the subject of their observations, and are

generally of opinion that the Amblyopsis was not originally blind, but

that, having found its way into the cave, it gradually lost its powers

of vision. The celebrated naturalist Agassiz, however, being perfectly

convinced that all animals existing in a wild state have been created

within their actual bounds with all the peculiarities of structure which

distinguish them at the present day, is of opinion that the blind fish

and all the other blind animals of the Mammoth Cave are the aboriginal

children of darkness, and have at no time been connected with the world

of light.

CHAPTER XV.

CAVES AS PLACES OF REFUGE.

The Cave of Adullam—Mahomet in the Cave of Thaur—The Cave of Longara—The

Cave of Egg—The Caves of Rathlin—The Cave of Yeermalik—The Caves of

Granada—Aben Aboo, the Morisco king—The Caves of Gortyna and Melidoni—

Atrocities of French Warfare in Algeria—The Caves of the Dahra—The

Cave of Shelas—St. Arnaud.

In times of war or persecution, caverns have often served as places of

concealment. It was in the cave of Adullam that David hid himself to

escape from the fury of Saul; and on the flight from Mecca to Medina,

Mahomet and his disciple Abu Bekr took refuge in a cave in Mount Thaur.

They left Mecca while it was yet dark, making their way on foot by the

light of the stars, and the day dawned as they found themselves at the

foot of the hill, about an hour’s distance from the holy city. Scarcely

were they within the cave when they heard the sound of pursuit. Abu

Bekr, though a brave man, quaked with fear. ‘Our pursuers,’ said he,

‘are many, and we are but two.’ ‘Nay,’ replied Mahomet, ‘there is a

third: God is with us!’

And here the Moslem writers relate a miracle dear to the minds of true

believers. By the time, say they, that his pursuers, the Koreishites,

reached the mouth of the cave, an acacia-tree had sprung up before it,

in the spreading branches of which a pigeon had made its nest and laid

its eggs, and over the whole a spider had woven its web. When the

Koreishites beheld these signs of undisturbed quiet, they concluded that

no one could recently have entered the cavern, so they turned away and

pursued their search in another direction.

But caverns have not always proved safe places of refuge, and a

barbarous enemy has often used them for the destruction of those who

there vainly sought safety. Thus, in Palestine, the Jews, who hid

themselves with their wives and children in deep caverns hollowed in the

flanks of a precipitous mountain, could not escape the satellites of

Herod, who, let down from above in large baskets or tubs, put these

defenceless fugitives to the sword. During the Gallic war Cæsar ordered

his lieutenant Crassus to wall up the mouths of the caves in which the

inhabitants of Aquitaine had sought a refuge, and many of them were thus

immured alive.

In the year 1510, when the French army, on its retreat from Italy, was

traversing the defiles of Piedmont, the rearguard, commanded by the

famous Chevalier Bayard, the good knight ‘without fear or reproach,’

having halted at Longara, the mercenaries, who formed a considerable

part of his troops, spread over the country, pillaging and destroying

wherever they went.

To escape from these savage bands, the nobles of the district persuaded

about two thousand of the peasantry to accompany them, with their

families and an abundant supply of provisions, into the Cave of Longara,

which forms a vast though low vaulted hall, about 1,200 feet long and

300 feet broad, but with an entrance so narrow that only a single person

can pass at a time. The mercenaries, having discovered the secret of the

cave, rushed to the spot, eager for pillage. The unfortunate refugees

vainly strove to soften the hearts of these barbarians, but, finding all

supplications vain, they took courage from despair, and, favoured by the

natural strength of the cave, repelled the attack of the first banditti

who attempted to force an entrance.

The ruffians now returned to the charge in greater numbers; but being

still unable to accomplish their object, they formed the diabolical plan

of setting fire to a heap of hay, straw, and greenwood, which they piled

up before the mouth of the grotto. The smoke penetrated into the cave

and in a short time the two thousand wretches it contained—mostly women

and children—were suffocated. Bayard, enraged at this barbarous act,

which sullied his own honour, ordered the ringleaders to be seized and

hanged before the entrance of the cave.

While these malefactors were in the hands of the executioner, a lad of

fourteen, the only survivor of the catastrophe, was seen to crawl out of

the grotto. Bayard ordered every aid to be rendered him which his state

required, and could not refrain from tears while listening to his

lamentable tale. The boy related that when the smoke began to spread in

the cavern, the nobles, resolving to die at least like soldiers, wanted

to sally forth, sword in hand, but were prevented by the peasants, who

fell upon them and disarmed them, saying, ‘You have led us hither, and

here with us you shall die!’ Thus, a few moments before a common doom

was to destroy both nobles and serfs, a horrible strife had arisen

between them in the darkness of the cave.

‘And thou, my friend,’ asked Bayard, ‘by what miracle hast thou escaped

death?’ ‘I had remarked,’ answered the lad, ‘a feeble ray of daylight in

a corner of the grotto, and applied my mouth to the crevice through

which it passed. I soon fainted, but this small portion of fresh air

preserved my life. When I recovered my senses, I remembered all that had

passed, but I was alone, and it took me a long time to crawl out of the

grotto.’ ‘All thy companions,’ answered Bayard, ‘have been buried, by my

orders, in consecrated ground; and behold! there hang their assassins!’

Unfortunately the history of our land is tarnished with similar deeds of

atrocity.

A cave in the Isle of Egg, one of the Hebrides, has a very narrow

entrance, through which one can hardly creep on knees and hands, but it

rises steep and lofty within, and runs into the bowels of the rock to

the depth of 255 measured feet. The rude and stony bottom of this cave

is strewed with the bones of men, women, and children, the sad relics of

the ancient inhabitants of the island, 200 in number, of whose

destruction the following story is related. ‘The Macdonalds, of the Isle

of Egg, a people dependent on Clanranald, had done some injury to the

Laird of Macleod. The tradition of the isle says that it was by a

personal attack on the chieftain, in which his back was broken; but that

of the other isles bears that the injury was offered to two or three of

the Macleods, who, landing upon Egg, and behaving insolently towards the

islanders, were bound hand and foot, and turned adrift in a boat, which

the winds and waves safely conducted to Skye. To avenge the offence

given, Macleod sailed with such a body of men as rendered resistance

hopeless. The natives, fearing his vengeance, concealed themselves in

the cavern; and, after strict search, the Macleods went on board their

galleys, after doing what mischief they could, concluding the

inhabitants had left the isle. But next morning they espied from their

vessels a man upon the island, and, immediately landing again, they

traced his retreat, by means of a light snow on the ground, to the

cavern. Macleod then summoned the subterraneous garrison, and demanded

that the inhabitants who had offended him should be delivered up. This

was peremptorily refused. The chieftain thereupon caused his people to

divert the course of a rill of water, which, falling over the mouth of

the cave, would have prevented his purposed vengeance. He then kindled

at the entrance of the cavern a huge fire, and maintained it until all

within were destroyed by suffocation.’[22]

Footnote 22:

Voyages in the Lighthouse Yacht, published in Lockhart’s ‘Life of Sir

Walter Scott.’

In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, a no less horrible deed occurred during

the campaign of Essex against the Irish rebels. When the English forces

entered Antrim, the Scots of that county had sent their wives and

children, their aged and their sick, to the island of Rathlin for

safety. Sir John Norris was directed by the Earl to cross over and kill

all that he could find. The run up the Antrim coast was rapidly and

quietly accomplished. Before an alarm could be given the English had

landed close to the church which bears Columba’s name. The castle was

taken by storm, and every soul in it—about two hundred—put to the sword.

It was then discovered that the greater part of the fugitives, chiefly

mothers and their little ones, were hidden in the caves about the

shores. ‘There was no remorse,’ says Froude, ‘not even the faintest

shadow of perception that the occasion called for it. They were hunted

out as if they had been seals or otters, and all destroyed.’

When the barbarian Genghis Khan invaded Koondooz in Central Asia, 700

men took refuge, with their wives and families, in the cave of

Yeermalik, and defended themselves so valiantly that, after trying in

vain to destroy them by fire, the invader built them in with huge

natural blocks of stone, and left them to die of hunger. In the year

1840, the cave was visited by Captain Burslem and Lieutenant Sturt,

probably the only Europeans that ever entered its sepulchral recesses,

as the people in the neighbourhood believe it to be the abode of Sheitan

(the devil), and are as reluctant to guide a stranger as to explore it

themselves. The entrance is halfway up a hill, and is fifty feet high,

with about the same breadth. Not far from the entrance the travellers

found a passage between two jagged rocks, possibly the remains of

Genghis Khan’s fatal wall, so narrow that they had some difficulty in

squeezing through, and then before long came to a drop of sixteen feet,

down which they were lowered by ropes. Here they left two men to haul

them up on their return, and bade farewell to the light of day. The

narrow path, which led by the edge of a black abyss, sometimes over a

flooring of smooth ice for a few feet, widened gradually till they

reached a damp and dripping hall, so vast in size that the light of

their torches did not enable them to form any idea of its size. In this

colossal hall, or rather tomb, they found the remains of the victims of

Genghis Khan: hundreds of skeletons in a perfectly undisturbed state—

one, for instance, still holding the skeletons of two infants in its

long arms—while some of the bodies had been preserved, and lay

shrivelled, like the mummies reposing in the sepulchral vault of the

Great St. Bernard.

In the dark history of Philip II. of Spain, one of the darkest passages

is that of the rebellion and final destruction of the Moors of Granada.

Driven to despair by an intolerable tyranny, the unfortunate people at

length rose in arms against their oppressors; but all their bravery,

aided by the natural strength of their mountain fastnesses, failed to

defend them against the superior arms of their pitiless enemy. Defeated

in every encounter, driven from every stronghold, thousands perished by

famine or the sword, and those who submitted were either condemned to a

cruel death or exiled from their native soil. Many were driven to seek a

refuge in the caves of the Alpujarras, south-east of Granada, and of the

bold sierras that stretch along the southern shores of Spain. Their

pursuers followed up the chase with the fierce glee of the hunter

tracking the wild beast of the forest to his lair. There they were

huddled together, one or two hundred frequently in the same cavern. It

was not easy to detect the hiding-place amidst the rocks and thickets

which covered up and concealed the entrance. But when it was detected,

it was no difficult matter to destroy the inmates. The green bushes

furnished the material for a smouldering fire, and those within were

soon suffocated by the smoke, or, rushing out, threw themselves on the

mercy of their pursuers. Some were butchered on the spot; others were

sent to the gibbet or the galleys; while the greater part, with a fate

scarcely less terrible, were given up as the booty of the soldiers, and

sold into slavery.

Aben Aboo, the last chief of the insurgents, who had hitherto eluded

every attempt to seize him, but whose capture was of more importance

than that of any other of his nation, had a narrow escape in one of

these caverns not far from Berchal, where he lay hid with a wife and two

of his daughters. The women were suffocated, with about seventy other

persons; but the Morisco chief succeeded in making his escape through an

aperture at the further end, which was unknown to his enemies.

Unfortunately, the little king of the Alpujarras, as he was

contemptuously called by the Spaniards, was soon after killed in another

cavern by a traitor’s hand, and with him fell the last hope of the

Moriscos. His corpse, set astride on a mule, and supported erect in the

saddle by a wooden frame, concealed beneath ample robes, was led in

triumphal procession through the streets of Granada, and then

decapitated. The body was given to the rabble, who, after dragging it

through the streets with scoffs and imprecations, committed it to the

flames, while the head, inclosed in a cage, was set up over the gate

which opened on the Alpujarras. There it remained for many a year, no

one venturing to remove it, for on the cage was inscribed, ‘This is the

head of the traitor Aben Aboo. Let no one take it down, under pain of

death.’

The neighbourhood of Gortyna, in the island of Crete, has become

celebrated in modern times for a mountain-labyrinth, with numerous and

intricate passages, which exists in a valley near it, and in which the

myth of the Dædalean labyrinth was probably localised. During the

revolutionary war against the Turkish yoke (1822–1828) the Christian

inhabitants of the adjacent villages, for months together, lived in this

cavern, merely sallying out by day to till their lands, or to gather

their crops, when it was safe to do so. Though the dark recesses of the

cavern were not very inviting abodes for human beings for any long

period, yet the sense of safety gave it, doubtless, a peculiar charm;

for no one could approach within range of the numerous muskets pointed

from masked loopholes at its entrance, without being immediately shot

down; nor could either fire or smoke suffocate or dislodge its inmates,

as the entrance is in the side of a steep hill, 500 or 600 feet above

the bed of the wild valley in which it is situated, and thus is safe

from attack in every direction. History as well as tradition states

that, in all troubled times in Crete, the labyrinth of Gortyna has been

the retreat of the inhabitants of the neighbourhood; but when Captain

Spratt visited it in 1852, its only inhabitants were bats, who, by their

mode of hooking on to each other, were hanging from the ceiling like

clusters of bees. Under good native guides, he spent nearly two hours in

threading its tortuous passages, which turn in so many ways and have so

many branches as to justify the conclusion that a master hand must have

directed the excavation. The mark of the tool is seen upon every side of

the avenues and chambers, indicative of its artificial character.

Less fortunate than their brethren of Gortyna were the unfortunate

Cretans who, during the same war, took refuge in the cave of Melidoni.

In 1822, when Hussein Bey marched against the neighbouring village, the

inhabitants, to the number of three hundred, repaired to the cave,

taking with them their valuables and provisions sufficient for six

months. The entrance is so narrow and steep that they were perfectly

secured against an attack, and the Turks in their first attempt lost

twenty-five men. Finding that they refused submission on any terms,

Hussein Bey ordered a quantity of combustibles to be brought to the

entrance and set on fire. The smoke, rolling into the cavern in immense

volumes, drove the miserable fugitives into the remoter chambers, where

they lingered a little while longer, but were all eventually suffocated.

The Turks waited some days, but still did not dare to enter, and a Greek

captive was finally sent down on the promise of his life being spared.

The Turks then descended and plundered the bodies. A week afterwards,

three natives of the village stole into the cavern to see what had

become of their friends and relatives. It is said that they were so

overcome by the terrible spectacle that two of them died within a few

days. Years afterwards, when the last vestiges of the insurrection had

been suppressed, the Archbishop of Crete blessed the cavern, making it

consecrated ground; and the bones of the victims were gathered together

and partially covered up, in the outer chamber—a vast elliptical hall,

about eighty feet in height, and propped in the centre by an enormous

stalactitic pillar. On all sides the stalactites hang like fluted

curtains from the roof, here in broad sheeted masses, there dropping

into single sharp folds, but all on a scale of Titanic grandeur. In this

imposing and silent hall, under the black banners of eternal Night, lay

heaped the mouldering skulls and bones of the poor Christians. They

could not have had a more appropriate sepulchre.

Such have been the atrocities of Turkish warfare within the memory of

living man; but French officers have in our days emulated the cruelty of

Ottoman commanders, and shown that the nation which boasts of marching

at the head of civilisation has still retained much of its ancient

Gallic barbarism. When Marshal Pelissier filled with smoke the crowded

caves of the Dahra in 1844, and destroyed many hundreds of Kabyls whose

great crime it was to defend their country against the French hordes, it

has been stated, as an excuse for this atrocity, that he left open some

of the entrances to the caves, and that he only resorted to the smoke as

a means of compelling the fugitives to come out and surrender; but no

such excuse can be pleaded in favour of his successor, St. Arnaud. In

the summer of 1845,[23] this French commander received private

information that a body of Arabs had taken refuge in the cave of Shelas.

Thither he marched a body of troops. Eleven of the fugitives came out

and surrendered; but it was known to St. Arnaud, though not to any other

Frenchman, that five hundred men remained in the cave. All these people

Colonel St. Arnaud determined to kill, and at the same time to keep the

deed secret even from the troops engaged in the operation, as the

smoking of the Caves of the Dahra had not greatly tended to raise France

in the public opinion of Europe. Except his brother and Marshal Bugeaud,

whose approval was the prize he sought, no one was to know what he did.

He contrived to execute both his purposes. Thus he writes to his

brother:—‘I had all the apertures hermetically stopped up. I made one

vast sepulchre. No one went into the caverns; no one but myself knew

that under these there are 500 brigands who will never again slaughter

Frenchmen. A confidential report has told all to the marshal, without

terrible poetry or imagery. Brother, no one is so good as I am by taste

and by nature. From the 8th to the 12th I have been ill, but my

conscience does not reproach me. I have done my duty as a commander, and

to-morrow I would do the same over again; but I have taken a disgust to

Africa.’ With such nauseous sentiment wrote the man, ‘_good_ by taste

and nature,’ who seven years later was to attach the memory of his name

to the bloody days of December, and to deal with many a French

republican as he had dealt with the Arabs.

Footnote 23:

Kinglake.

CHAPTER XVI.

HERMIT CAVES—ROCK TEMPLES—ROCK CHURCHES.

St. Paul of Thebes—St. Anthony—His Visit to Alexandria, and death—

Numerous Cave Hermits in the East—St. Benedict in the Cave of Subiaco—

St. Cuthbert—St. Beatus—Rock Temples of Kanara—The Wonders of Ellora—

Ipsamboul—Rock Churches of Lalibala in Abyssinia—The Cave of

Trophonios—The Grotto of St. Rosolia near Palermo—The Chapel of Agios

Niketas in Greece—The Chapel of Oberstein on the Nahe—The repentant

fratricide.

The dim twilight of a forest, its leafy vaults, its majestic silence, or

its foliage moaning in the wind, are all apt to strike the mind with a

religious awe. But the solitude and stillness of caverns is equally well

adapted to awaken feelings of devotion, and thus we find that

contemplative minds in every age, and of every creed, have found in them

congenial retreats. The Indian fakir and the Mahometan dervish love the

seclusion of the silent grotto, and here also the Hebrew prophets not

seldom enjoyed their ecstatic visions.

[Illustration: INDIAN ROCK-CUT TEMPLE: PORCH OF THE CHAITYA CAVE TEMPLE,

AJUNTA.]

There can be no doubt that, during the first ages of Christianity many

an unknown anchorite retired to some solitary cave, as to a harbour of

refuge from the rude contact of the world; but the first hermit

mentioned in ecclesiastical history is St. Paul of Thebes, in Egypt,

who, during the persecution of Decius, in the middle of the third

century, retreated to the desert, where, dwelling in a cave, and living

on the fruits of trees, he reached his hundredth year. His friend and

disciple, St. Anthony, who first roused among his contemporaries a wide-

spread inclination for hermit seclusion, plays a far more conspicuous

part in the annals of the Church. Born of wealthy Coptic peasants, this

remarkable man, at the age of twenty, divided his whole property among

the poor, and thenceforth devoted himself to a life of the strictest

ascetism. He retired first to a rock-cave in the neighbourhood of his

native village, and then to the more distant ruins of a deserted castle,

where he spent twenty years as a hermit. Meanwhile his reputation for

sanctity had spread throughout all Egypt, and numerous candidates for a

hermit life besought him to take them under his spiritual care. He

yielded to their entreaties, and soon the neighbouring desert was

crowded with the huts of zealous anchorites, who revered him as their

model. But he was surrounded not only by these pious disciples; the

worldly-minded also came flocking to his cave for advice or assistance;

for the belief was general that, like the first Apostles, he was gifted

with the power of casting out devils and foretelling future events.

Anthony, thus disturbed in his solitary meditations, resolved to bury

himself still deeper in the desert, and fled to a cave in the furthest

parts of Egypt, near a source shaded by a few date-palms. Here he hoped

to be able to live entirely for prayer and contemplation, but his hopes

proved vain, for, after a long search, his disciples discovered his

retreat, and again anchorites and worldlings broke in upon his solitude.

In his hundredth year he was prevailed upon by St. Athanasius to visit

Alexandria, where, whenever he appeared, crowds gathered round him to

kiss the hem of his garment and to implore his blessing. Even the

Emperor Constantine the Great wrote to him; yet so indifferent had he

become to all worldly distinctions that he could with difficulty be

prevailed upon to have the letter read to him. Thus, honoured by high

and low, and yet avoiding all honour, Anthony reached the patriarchal

age of 105. At the approach of death he begged two of his most beloved

disciples to conduct him to the wildest part of the desert. Here he died

in their arms, after having first made them promise to keep the place of

his burial secret, as he feared that an undue reverence might be paid to

his bones.

Anthony’s example was followed far and wide over the eastern world.

Whole colonies of hermits settled in the desert of Thebes, near Lake

Moeris, in Southern Palestine, in Armenia, and Pontus. Their numbers

amounted to thousands, many living in rude huts, which they erected with

their own hands, while others found a congenial retreat in the grottoes

and rock-tombs which abound in many of the countries where they dwelt.

From the East the spirit of monastic seclusion soon spread to Western

Europe. St. Benedict, the founder of the order which has rendered such

signal service to learning during the Middle Ages, spent three years in

an inaccessible cave near Subiaco, five leagues from Tivoli. Romanus, a

monk in a neighbouring convent, alone knew of his retreat, and daily let

down by a rope, from the top of the rock in which the cave was situated,

the small quantity of bread which he needed for his subsistence. Here he

was at length discovered by some shepherds, who at first sight took him

for a wild beast, as he was clothed in skins, but soon discovered that

he was a saint by the wise lessons he gave them.

A similar longing for a life of pious seclusion induced St. Cuthbert to

quit the Convent of Lindisfarne, of which he had been prior, and to seek

a retreat in a grotto excavated by his own hands, on one of the Farne

Islands, on the coast of Northumberland. An ox-hide, which he hung

before its entrance and turned towards the side whence the wind blew,

afforded a scanty shelter against the rigours of a northern winter. But

the fame of his sanctity spread over all England, and numerous pilgrims

resorted to his cave, to profit by his advice, or to seek consolation in

their troubles. One day, when he had spent eight years in seclusion, the

king of Northumbria, attended by his principal nobles, landed on

Cuthbert’s island-rock to beg him to accept the episcopal dignity of

Durham, to which he had been elected. The holy anchorite yielded, with

many tears, and after an obstinate resistance, for he was loth to accept

duties which tore him from his solitude. After two years he resigned his

bishopric, and returned to his beloved cave, where he shortly after

died. According to a popular legend the Entrochi, or calcareous joints

of the petrified Lily-Encrinites, which are found among the rocks of the

Farne Islands, are forged by his spirit, and pass there by the name of

‘St. Cuthbert’s beads.’ While at this task, he is supposed to sit during

the night upon a certain rock, and to use another as his anvil.

‘Such tales had Whitby’s fishers told,

And said they might his shape behold,

And hear his anvil sound;

A deadened clang—a huge dim form,

Seen but, and heard, when gathering storm

And night was closing round.’—_Marmion._

The Beatenberg, situated on the northern side of the lake of Thun, is

named after a celebrated cave in which St. Beatus, originally a British

noble, who had come to preach the Gospel to the wild men of the

district, dwelt for many years, and died at the advanced age of ninety.

His relics remaining there, his fête-day attracted such crowds of

pilgrims that reforming Berne sent two deputies in 1528 to carry off the

saint’s skull and bury it between the lakes of Thun and Brienz; but

still the pilgrimages continued, and at length, in 1566, the Protestant

zeal of Berne went to the expense of a wall, and thus effectually shut

out the pilgrims, who, in more modern times, have been profitably

replaced by crowds of tourists.

Both in the heathen and the Christian world, grottoes, particularly such

as had been hallowed by the lives of sainted anchorites, have frequently

been consecrated to divine service; and to render them still more worthy

of their destination, the rude excavations of nature have not seldom

been enlarged and beautified with all the resources of art.

Among these subterranean places of worship, those of India are

deservedly renowned for their colossal size, and for the vast labour

bestowed upon the sculptures with which they are adorned. A description

of the famous rock-temples of Kanara, in the island of Salsette, near

Bombay, will give the reader some idea of their magnificence.

The way leads over a narrow mountain-path, through a jungle so dense

that the traveller is obliged to quit his palanquin, and to ascend on

foot the steep acclivity, from which, at some distance from the summit,

the large temple overlooks the country. This colossal work is hewn out

of the solid rock, ninety feet long and thirty-eight feet broad, with a

corresponding height, and forms an oblong square with a vaulted roof.

Two colossal rows of columns divide the hall into three naves or

avenues, and give it the form of an ancient basilica.

As the Temple of Kanara served the Portuguese for some time as a church,

during their occupation of the small archipelago of Bombay, the heathen

sculptures which decorated the interior have naturally been mostly

destroyed. This is the more to be regretted as the well-preserved and

masterly-executed capitals of the mighty columns justify the belief that

their artistic merit must have been worthy of the grand dimensions of

the hall. The beautiful portico, however, is still richly decorated. On

each side a recess contains a colossal, well-executed statue, and long

inscriptions in unknown characters are carved on the square pillars of

the entrance. The charms of a mysterious past thus add to the interest

of this beautiful monument, the work of an astonishing patience and

perseverance. The outer face of the portico, as well as the vestibule

extending before it, twenty-eight feet deep, have been considerably

injured by the ravages of time: many stones have started from their

joints, and a multitude of creeping plants cling to the mouldering

statues. Thus the efforts of man to rear eternal monuments are vain;

they must necessarily yield to the living powers of nature.

‘The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

And, like this unsubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind.’[24]

Footnote 24:

Shakespeare, ‘Tempest,’ iv. 1.

[Illustration: ROCK-TEMPLES OF AJUNTA.]

Steps are hewn in the rock to the summit of the mountain, and various

intricate paths lead to smaller excavations, consisting mostly of two

cells and a portico. Near each of them is a well or basin, likewise hewn

out of the rock, in which the rain-water collects, affording a grateful

beverage to the tired wanderer. Many of these caves are larger and more

perfect than the others, and some in their general effect resemble the

great temple, although far inferior in size and decoration.

The whole aspect of this perforated mountain shows that a complete cave-

town, capable of containing several thousand inhabitants, has been

hollowed out in its flanks. The largest excavation was, beyond a doubt,

the chief temple. The smaller caves, arranged according to the same

plan, likewise served for devotional purposes; and the rest were

dwellings more or less commodious and large according to the rank or

means of their possessors, or, what is still more likely, the abode of

pious Brahmans and their scholars at the time when India was the cradle

of arts and sciences, while the nations of Europe were still plunged in

barbarism.

From the summit of this wonderful mountain the spectator enjoys a

beautiful prospect. The island of Salsette lies before him as if spread

out on a map, affording a most agreeable variety of rice-fields and

cocoa-nut groves, of villages and meadows, of woody hills and fruitful

vales. The surrounding mountains form a foreground of grey rocks, dotted

with trees, or excavated into dark grottoes, once the abode of fakirs,

but now the retreats of tigers, snakes, huge bats, and enormous swarms

of bees, while towards the south the horizon is bounded by the island of

Bombay, with its forest of masts, towards the east by the mainland,

towards the north by Bassein and the neighbouring mountains, and towards

the south by the ocean. The enjoyment of the picturesque scene is marred

only by the many tigers which infest the mountains, and frequently

descend into the plain, where they not only carry away sheep and oxen,

but also tear many a poor Hindoo to pieces.

The rock-temples of Kanara are rivalled by those of Elephanta, Karli,

and Ajunta, and far surpassed in magnificence and extent by the

excavations of Ellora, near the town and fort of Dowlatabad, where a

whole mountain of hard red granite has been hollowed out into an immense

range of highly ornamented grottoes and temples, fit for the residence

of a whole pantheon of deities, and for the reception of a whole nation

of pilgrims.

About three miles to the north of Madras, where the rock touches the

sea, navigators had long remarked some pillars of stone rising from the

water and covered with rude sculptures. From these the spot received the

name of the Seven Pagodas. Most of them have since been destroyed by the

tides, and one only is still standing, though tottering to its fall.

These, however, were but the advanced posts of the colossal excavations

in the rocky wall behind; for here also are seen large grottoes,

porticoes, and temples, as at Ellora, though of somewhat smaller

proportions, and of less beautiful execution. They are dedicated to the

worship of Vishnu and Siva, and covered with inscriptions. A whole rock-

town, or at least a vast sanctuary, thus lies concealed on this solitary

coast.

Similar cave-temples are met with in Cochin China, Birmah, Malwah, and

Ceylon, where the spacious rock-temple of Dambool is deservedly

celebrated for its antiquity, and for its numerous statues of Buddha, in

the varied attitudes of exhortation and repose.

On the banks of the mysterious Nile we find rock-temples rivalling those

of India in colossal grandeur, and among these Ipsamboul is pre-eminent

in splendour.

‘After sailing for some hours,’ says Warburton,[25] ‘through a country

quite level on the eastern bank, we come upon a precipitous rocky

mountain, starting up so suddenly from the river’s edge, that its very

summits are reflected in the water. We moored under a sand-bank, and,

accompanied by half-a-dozen of the crew with torches, approached this

isolated and stupendous rock. Yet even here the daring genius of

Ethiopian architecture ventured to enter into rivalry with Nature’s

greatness, and found her material in the very mountains that seemed to

bid defiance to her efforts.

Footnote 25:

‘The Crescent and the Cross.’

‘On the face of the vertical cliff a recess is excavated to the extent

of about a hundred feet in width. From this four gigantic figures stand

out in very bold relief. Between the two central stony giants, a lofty

doorway opens into a vast hall, supported by square pillars, each the

size of a tower, and covered with hieroglyphics. Just enough painting

still glimmers faintly on these columns to show that they were formerly

covered with it; and the walls are carved into historic figures in

slight relief; these, as our torches threw an uncertain glare over them,

seemed to move and become instinct with life.

‘This temple was dedicated to Athor, the lady of Aboccis (the ancient

name of Ipsamboul), who is represented within under the form of the

sacred bow. This was, however, a mere “chapel of ease” to the great

temple, excavated from a loftier rock, about fifty yards distant.

Between these two a deep gorge once ran to the river, but this is now

choked up with sand, in whose burning waves we waded knee-deep to the

Temple of Osiris.

‘Here a space of about 100 feet in height is hewn from the mountain;

smooth, except for the reliefs. Along the summit runs a frieze of little

monkeys in long array, as if the architect felt the absurdity of the

whole business, or as Byron sometimes finishes off a sublime sentence

with a scoff. Then succeeds a line of hieroglyphics and some faintly-

carved figures, also in relief, and then four colossal giants that seem

to guard the portal. They are seated on thrones (which form, with

themselves, part of the living rock), and are about sixty feet high. One

is quite perfect, admirably cut, and the proportions admirably

preserved; the second is defaced as far as the knee; the third is buried

in sand to the waist; and the fourth has only the face and neck visible

above the desert’s sandy avalanche.

‘The doorway stands between the two central statues, and is surmounted

by the statue of Isis wearing the moon as a turban.

‘On entering, the traveller finds himself in a temple, which a few days’

work might restore to the state in which it was left, just finished,

three thousand years ago. The dry climate and its extreme solitude have

preserved its most delicate details from injury; besides which it was

hermetically sealed by the desert for thousands of years, until

Burckhardt discovered it, and Mr. Hay cleared away its protecting sands.

‘A vast and gloomy hall, such as Eblis might have given Vathek audience

in, receives you in passing from the flaming sunshine into that shadowy

portal. It is some time before the eye can ascertain its dimensions

through the imposing gloom, but gradually there reveals itself, around

and above you, a vast aisle, with pillars formed of eight colossal

giants, upon whom the light of heaven has never shone. These images of

Osiris are backed by enormous pillars, behind which run two great

galleries; and in these torchlight alone enabled us to peruse a series

of sculptures in relief representing the triumphs of Rameses the Second,

or Sesostris. The painting, which once enhanced the effect of these

spirited representations, is not dimmed, but crumbled away; where it

exists the colours are as vivid as ever.

‘This unequalled hall is one hundred feet in length, and from it eight

lesser chambers, all sculptured, open to the right and left. Straight on

is a low doorway opening into a second hall of similar height, supported

by four square pillars, and within all is the adytum, wherein stands a

simple altar of the living rock in front of four large figures seated on

rocky thrones. This inner shrine is hewn at least one hundred yards into

the rock, and here, in the silent depth of that great mountain, these

awful idols, with their mysterious altar of human sacrifice, looked very

preadamitic and imposing. They seemed to sit there waiting for some

great summons which should awaken and reanimate these “kings of the

earth, who lie in glory, every one in his own house.”

‘We wandered through many chambers, in which the air is so calm and

undisturbed that the very smell of the torches of the last explorers of

these caverns was perceptible.’

In Abyssinia the rock-churches of Lalibala likewise give proof of an

ancient state of civilisation, strongly contrasting with the barbarism

of the present times.

Like the temples of Ellora, some of these curious structures have been

hollowed out of single blocks of stone left standing in the centre of

open courts excavated in the bosom of the rock, while others are

completely subterranean. Though far inferior in magnificence and extent

to those wonderful edifices, they are yet very remarkable. The courts,

in which the three principal monolithic churches are respectively

dedicated to our Saviour, to the Holy Virgin, and to St. Emmanuel,

communicate with each other by narrow passages, the whole thus forming a

continued series of excavations. The Church of St. Emmanuel is forty-

eight feet long, thirty-two feet broad, and forty feet high, but it is

surpassed in size by the Church of the Holy Virgin, where the rock-walls

of the court are moreover perforated with sepulchral vaults and with

cells for the habitation of monks. The town of Lalibala is situated in a

beautiful country, 7,000 feet above the level of the sea, on the slope

of the mighty Ascheten mountain, and commands a prospect of Alpine

magnificence. Though it is now reduced to about 2,000 inhabitants, its

eight rock-churches (five monolithic and subaërial, three subterranean),

prove that it must once have been a place of considerable importance.

Divine service is still performed in all these churches, which are the

resort of numerous pilgrims, and to whose service above 500 priests,

monks, and nuns are attached.

Though ancient Greece has no such huge rock-temples to boast of as India

or Egypt, yet caverns played an important part in her ancient religious

history. ‘Before the old tribes of Hellas erected temples to the

divinities,’ says Porphyry, in his treatise _De Antro Nympharum_, ‘they

consecrated caves and grottoes to their service; in the island of Crete

to Zeus, in Arcadia to Artemis and to Pan; in the isle of Naxos to

Dionysos.’

Caves were the site of some of the most celebrated Grecian oracles. The

tripod of the Delphian pythoness stood over a subterranean hollow, from

which the divine inspiration was supposed to ascend; and pilgrims from

all parts of Hellas resorted to a cave in the neighbourhood of Lebadeia,

a city of Bœotia, and named after Trophonios, a mythical personage who

was supposed to have lived there for many years, and was subsequently

deified as an oracular god. Those who repaired to this cave for

information were required, after passing some preparatory days in a

chapel dedicated to Fortune and to the ‘good genius,’ to anoint

themselves with oil, to bathe in a certain river, and to drink of the

water of two neighbouring springs called Lêthê and Mnêmosynê, the first

of which made them forgetful of the past, while the second fixed in

their memory all they heard and saw in the cavern. They were then

clothed in a linen robe, took a honeyed cake in their hands, and, after

praying before an ancient statue of Trophonios, descended into the

subterranean chamber by a narrow passage. Here it was that the future

was unfolded to them, either by visions or extraordinary sounds. The

return from the cave was by the same passage, but the persons consulting

were obliged to walk backwards. They generally came out astonished,

melancholy, and dejected. The priests on their return placed them on an

elevated seat, called the seat of Mnêmosynê or remembrance, and the

broken sentences they uttered in their confused state of mind were

considered as the answer of the oracle. They were then conducted to the

chapel of the ‘good genius,’ where by degrees they recovered their usual

composure and cheerfulness. There can be no doubt that the priests

introduced themselves into the cave by secret passages, and worked upon

the excited imagination of their dupes by terrible sounds and

apparitions. During the palmy days of the oracle, the neighbourhood of

the Cave of Trophonios was decorated with temples and statues; at

present its very site is uncertain.

Like ancient paganism, Christianity not seldom celebrates her rites in

caves hallowed by the memory of saints and anchorites. A stately church

rises over the Grotto of the Nativity, at Bethlehem, and a magnificent

pile has been constructed at Jerusalem over the rock-tomb in which our

Saviour was buried. The grotto on Mount Carmel, to which the prophet

Elijah retreated from the world, is now dedicated to divine worship, in

the convent which bears his name; and the cave in which John the

Evangelist is said to have written the Apocalypse during his exile in

the island of Patmos has also been converted into a chapel.

One of the most celebrated rock-churches is the grotto of St. Rosolia,

the patroness of Palermo. This illustrious lady was niece to King

William the Good, and, as the legends inform us, no less remarkable for

her beauty than for her virtues, which made her the admiration of all

Sicily. Never was a princess more fitted to adorn society; but the world

had so few attractions for a spirit that could only breathe in the pure

regions of piety, that, at the age of fifteen, she retired to the

solitary mountains, and, from the date of her disappearance, in 1159,

was never more heard of for about five hundred years. The people thought

she had been taken up to heaven, as the fitting abode for her more than

human perfections; but in the year 1624, during the time of a dreadful

plague, a holy man had a vision that the saint’s bones were lying in a

cave near to the top of the Monte Pellegrino, and that if these were

taken up with due reverence and carried in procession thrice round the

walls of the city, they should immediately be delivered from the

scourge. The bones were accordingly sought and found, thrice carried

round the town, as the vision had described, and the plague suddenly

ceased. From that time St. Rosolia was revered as the patron saint of

Palermo, and the remote cave where she probably spent many years of her

solitary life, became one of the most renowned sanctuaries of the

Catholic Church, and the resort of innumerable pilgrims. The mountain is

extremely high, and so steep that before the discovery of St. Rosolia it

was looked upon as almost inaccessible; but a fine road, very properly

termed La Scala, or the stair, has been cut out in the rock, and leads

from terrace to terrace, over almost perpendicular precipices, to the

entrance of the holy grotto, which is situated near the very top of the

mountain, and commands a magnificent prospect. Within two miles of the

foot of the mountain, the eye discerns the city of Palermo, with its

beautiful villas and luxuriant gardens, and then, taking a wider range,

glances to the north, over the dark blue sea bounded by the Lipari

Islands and the ever-fuming cone of Stromboli; while to the east a large

portion of Etna, although at the distance of almost the whole length of

Sicily, towers like a giant above the minor mountain chains. A church

and other buildings, forming a kind of court yard, where some priests

reside, appointed to watch over the treasures of the place, and to

receive the offerings of pilgrims that visit them, have been erected

round the grotto.

As may easily be imagined, the history of rock-chapels has frequently

been embellished with legendary tales. The chapel of Agios Niketas (St.

Nicholas) in Crete, is at present merely a smoky-looking cave beneath a

large detached mass of rock, lying on the slope of an abrupt mountain;

but there are still the remains of a building which once extended far

beyond the present limits. The roof of the cavern, although very uneven,

is also elaborately ornamented with paintings, representing the

remarkable events in the life of the Saviour and of St. Nicholas, and

showing that considerable cost and artistic care have been bestowed upon

it. Though it is now abandoned, an event that is said to have happened

about four or five centuries ago gives this cave a special interest with

the natives. The church was crowded with Christians from the adjacent

villages on the eve of the festival of their patron saint Agios Niketas,

so as to be ready (as is usual with the Greeks) for the matin service at

daybreak. But the fires which the assembled party had lighted near it

had been observed at sea by a Barbary corsair then cruising off the

island, and guided him to the spot, where, under the darkness of the

night, he landed his crew in a neighbouring cove. Thus unobserved, they

stole up to the church, and, finding it full of the natives, closed the

door and windows upon them, and waited for day, the better to secure

their captives for embarkation. In this dreadful plight the unfortunate

Cretans raised their voices in a general prayer to Saint Niketas. Their

supplications were heard, for the priest soon after informed them that

the saint had shown him a way of escape—through the back part of the

cavern, by opening a small aperture communicating with another cavern

that led finally out upon the mountain slope over the rock. Through this

aperture they all silently crept unseen and unheard by the corsairs.

Another interesting legend is attached to a small rock-chapel situated

beneath the ruins of the ancient Castle of Oberstein, on the Nahe. The

Baron of Oberstein, having, in a fit of jealousy, hurled his younger

brother from the balcony of the castle, fled from the scene of his

crime. For years he wandered, a wretched outcast, from land to land; but

wherever he went the curse of Cain was upon him, and left him no rest by

night or day. At length he came to Rome, to confess his fratricide at

the feet of the Sovereign Pontiff, who comforted him with the assurance

that he would recover his lost peace by returning to Oberstein and

excavating with his own hands a rock-chapel for the interment of his

brother on the spot where he fell.

Soon after the self-banished lord made his appearance at Oberstein in a

hermit’s garb, and set to work upon the hard rock with indefatigable

zeal. Never was labour performed with better will, and such,

consequently, was the progress of the excavation that it seemed as if he

were assisted by the angels in his penitential task. At the expiration

of four years, the rock-chapel was completed, and the bones of the

murdered man were conveyed with great ceremony to the tomb which had

been prepared for their reception at the foot of the altar. As soon as

they were lowered into the grave, the murderer bent over them; a smile

of ineffable happiness was seen to illumine his emaciated features, and

he dropped down dead upon the remains of his brother.

CHAPTER XVII.

ICE-CAVES AND WIND-HOLES.

Ice-caves of St. Georges and St. Livres—Beautiful Ice-stalagmites in the

Cave of La Baume—The Schafloch—Ice Cataract in the Upper Glacière of

St. Livres—Ice Cavern of Eisenerz—The Cave of Yeermalik—Volcanic Ice-

caves—Æolian Caverns of Terni—Causes of the low temperature of Ice-

caves.

Some caves, remarkable for an extremely low temperature even in summer,

form natural ice-cellars, though unconnected with glaciers or snow

mountains, and in latitudes and at altitudes where ice could not under

ordinary circumstances be supposed to exist. Besides the interest

attaching to these natural curiosities, these ice-caves are sometimes

lucrative sources of revenue to their owners, or answer various purposes

of use or comfort.

In hot summers, when the supplies of the artificial ice-houses fail in

Geneva and Lausanne, the hotel-keepers have recourse to the stores laid

up for them by nature in the ice-caves or glacières of St. Georges and

St. Livres, situated in the canton of Vaud, on the slope of the Jura.

Other ice-caves are made use of as dairies, or as storehouses for

cheese; and the quarries of Niedermendig, near the small town of

Andernach, on the Rhine, which are likewise remarkable for a glacial

temperature, serve as excellent beer-cellars.

To Mr. Browne, who has made them his special study, we are indebted for

an interesting account of the ice-caves of France and Switzerland,[26]

which, as may naturally be expected in halls and galleries hung with

drapery of transparent silver, not seldom offer scenes of beauty

rivalling the most renowned stalactital grottoes.

Footnote 26:

‘Ice Caves of France and Switzerland: a Narrative of Subterranean

Exploration.’ By the Rev. G. F. Browne. Longmans, 1865.

[Illustration: LOWER GLACIÈRE OF ST. LIVRES.]

In the Glacière of Grâce-Dieu, or La Baume, near Besançon, Mr. Browne

was particularly struck with three large stalagmites of ice rising in a

line across the middle of the cave. The central mass was remarkable only

for its size, the girth being sixty-six and a half feet at some distance

from the ice-floor, with which it blended; but nothing could be more

strikingly lovely than the stalagmite to its right, owing to the good

taste of some one, who had found that much ice was wont to accumulate on

that spot, and had accordingly fixed the trunk of a small fir-tree, with

the upper branches complete, to receive the water from the corresponding

fissure in the roof. The consequence was that, while the actual tree had

vanished from sight under its crystal covering, the ice with which it

was incrusted showed every elegance of form which a mould so graceful

could suggest, each twig of the different boughs becoming, to all

appearance, a solid bar of frosted ice, from which complicated groups of

icicles streamed down. But the mass to the left was the grandest and

most beautiful of all. It consisted of two lofty heads, like weeping

willows in Carrara marble, with three or four others less lofty,

resembling a family group of lions’ heads in a subdued attitude of

grief, richly decked with icy manes. Similar heads seemed to grow out

here and there from the solid sides of the huge mass, which measured

seventy-six and a half feet in girth about two feet from the floor. When

this column was looked at from the side removed from the entrance to the

cave, so that it stood in the centre of the light which poured down the

long slope from the outer world, the transparency of the ice made the

whole look as if it were set in a narrow frame of impalpable liquid

blue—the effect of light penetrating through the mass at its extreme

edges.

Other and no less striking beauties rewarded our subterranean explorer

on his visit to the Schafloch or Trou-aux-Moutons, a vast ice-cave on

the Rothhorn, in the canton of Berne, which takes its name from the fact

that, when a sudden storm comes on, the sheep and goats make their way

to it for shelter, though never going so far as the spot where the ice

begins. On entering the cave the way lies over a wild confusion of loose

masses of stone, which soon, however, begin to be intermingled with ice,

until the latter entirely hides the naked rock under a crystal mantle.

‘On either side of the cave was a grand column of ice, forming the

portal, as it were, through which we must pass to further beauties. The

ice-floor rose to meet these columns in a graceful swelling curve,

perfectly continuous, so that the general effect was that of two columns

whose roots expanded and met in the middle of the cave. Convinced that

internal investigations would prove interesting, I began to chop a hole

in one of the pillars about two feet from the ground, and having made an

entrance sufficiently large, proceeded to get into the cavity which

presented itself. The flooring of the dome-shaped grotto in which I

found myself was loose rock, at a level of about two feet below the

surface of the ice-floor, on which my guide Christian still stood. The

dome itself was not high enough to allow me to stand upright, and from

the roof, principally from the central part, a complex mass of delicate

icicles passed down to the floor, leaving a narrow burrowing passage

round, which was itself invaded by icicles from the lower part of the

sloping roof, and by stubborn stalagmites of ice rising from the floor.

The details of this central cluster of icicles, and, in fact, of every

portion of the interior of the strange grotto were exceedingly lovely,

and I crushed with much regret, on hands and knees, through fair crystal

forests and frozen dreams of beauty. In making the tour of this grotto,

contorting my body like a snake, to get in and out among the ice-

pillars, and do as little damage as might be, I yet, with all my care,

was accompanied by the incessant shiver and clatter of breaking and

falling ice. Having squeezed myself out again through the narrow hole, I

now passed between the two gigantic columns, and found that the sea of

ice became still broader and bolder, until we came to the edge of a

glorious ice-fall, round and smooth and perfectly unbroken, passing down

like the rapids of some river too deep for its surface to be disturbed,

and plunging majestically into a dark gulf, of which we could see

neither the roof nor the end.’

We will now follow Mr. Browne to the Upper Glacière of St. Livres, where

the interesting discovery was made that the ice-stream which filled the

cave, instead of terminating with the wall of rock at its end, turned

off to the right, and was lost in darkness. By tying a candle to a long

stick, and thrusting it down the slope of ice, it was further found that

the stream passed down at a very steep incline, and poured under a

narrow and low arch in the wall of the cave, beyond which nothing could

be seen. Steps were now cut down the slope by one of the party, who was

carefully let down, and, his work being completed, the others followed

him through the arch—a rather awkward undertaking, for, on pushing

through, their breasts were pressed on to the ice, while their backs

scraped against the rock which formed the roof.

‘As soon as this trough was passed,’ says Mr. Browne, ‘the ice spread

out like a fan, and finally landed us in a second cavern, 72 feet long

by 36 feet broad, to which this was the only entrance. The breadth of

the fan at the bottom was 27 feet, and near the archway a very striking

column poured from a vertical fissure in the wall, and joined the main

stream. The fissure was partially open to the cave, and showed the solid

round column within the rock: this column measured 18½ feet in

circumference, a little below the point where it became free of the

fissure, and it had a stream of ice 22 feet long pouring from its base.

The peculiar structure of the ice gave the whole mass the appearance of

coursing down very rapidly, as if the water had been frozen while thus

moving, and had not therefore ceased so to move.... At the farthest end

of the cave, a lofty dome opened up in the roof, beneath which a very

lovely cluster of columns had grouped itself, formed of clear porcelain-

like ice, and fretted and festooned with the utmost delicacy, as if

Andersen’s Ice Maiden had been there in one of her amiable moods and had

built herself a palace.’

[Illustration: ICE STREAMS IN THE UPPER GLACIÈRE OF ST. LIVRES.]

In Upper Styria, the Frauenmauer Mountain, which overlooks the mining

town of Eisenerz, contains a remarkable ice-chamber, consisting of a

grotto from thirty to forty fathoms long, decked with ice-crystals,

pillars of ice, and cascades of the same material, the floor being

composed of ice as smooth as glass. In the summer pleasure parties

assemble in the cave, and amuse themselves with sliding down its sloping

ice-floors.

In his work on the Natural Wonders of the Austrian Empire, the

naturalist Sartori describes his visit to an ice-cave on the Brandstein,

a peak situated in the same district, which thus appears to be rich in

glacières. He found _crimpons_ necessary for descending the frozen snow,

which led from the entrance to the floor of the cave, where he

discovered pillars and capitals and pyramids of ice of every possible

shape and variety, as if the cave had contained the ruins of a Gothic

church or a fairy palace. At the further end, after passing large

cascades of ice, his party reached a dark grey hole, which lighted up

into blue and green under the influence of the torches; they could not

discover the end of this hole, and the stones which they rolled down

into it seemed to go on for ever.

Other natural glacières are also mentioned as occurring in Bohemia,

Hungary, the Harz, in several places in North America, and probably

there are few mountainous regions without them.

The Cave of Yermalik, already mentioned among the silent retreats of

nature which have been rendered infamous by the cruelty of man, is

likewise highly interesting as a natural glacière. After leaving the

roomy dome in which they found the skeletons of the victims of Genghis

Khan, Captain Burslem and Lieutenant Sturt proceeded through several low

arches and smaller caves, and reached at length a vast hall, in the

centre of which was an enormous mass of clear ice, smooth and polished

as a mirror, and in the form of a gigantic beehive, with its dome-shaped

top just touching the long icicles which depended from the jagged

surface of the rock. A small aperture led to the interior of this

wonderful congelation, which was divided into several compartments of

every fantastic shape. In some the glittering icicles hung like curtains

from the roof; in others, the vault was smooth as glass. Beautifully

brilliant were the prismatic colours reflected from the varied surface

of the ice when the torches flashed suddenly upon them as they passed

from cave to cave. Around, above, beneath, everything was of solid ice,

and being unable to stand on account of its slippery nature, they slid,

or rather glided mysteriously, along the glassy surface of this hall of

spells. In one of the largest compartments the icicles had reached the

floor, and gave the idea of pillars supporting the roof.’[27]

Footnote 27:

Burslem, ‘A Peep into Toorkistan.’

Rocks of volcanic formation seem to afford favourable opportunities for

the congelation of water. Ice-caves are found in Mount Etna, on the Peak

of Teneriffe, and among the lava-currents of Iceland.[28] Scrope visited

one of these natural glacières near the village of Roth, in the

neighbourhood of Andernach, on the Rhine. It formed the mouth of a deep

fissure in a current of basalt derived from an ancient volcanic cone

above it, and its floor was covered with a crust of ice at the time of

his visit, about noon on a very hot day in August.

Footnote 28:

The Cave of Suitshellir.

The phenomenon of wind-grottoes is analogous to that of ice-caves, and

not seldom associated with it. Here cold currents of air, increasing in

violence as the day is hotter, are found to blow from the interstices of

rocks. One of the most celebrated of these Æolian caverns is found near

Terni in Italy. The entrance is closed by an old gate, through the

crevices of which the wind issues with a rustling noise, while in the

grotto itself the current is sufficiently strong to extinguish a torch.

The proprietors of some neighbouring villas have put the phenomenon to

an ingenious use. Leaden pipes, branching out from the grotto, convey on

sultry summer days an agreeable coolness through masks of gypsum with

wide distended mouths, which are fixed in the walls of the apartments.

The small town of Roquefort in France has been renowned ever since the

time of the Romans for the delicious flavour of its cheese, which is

said to owe its excellence to the cool cellars in which it is matured.

These are excavated on the northern slope of a great chalk plateau, and

communicate with numerous fissures in the rock, from which air-currents

stream forth of so low a temperature as to cause a thermometer marking

+23° R. in the shade, and in the external atmosphere, to fall to +4° R.

when exposed to their influence. The cellars are so valuable that one,

which cost 12,000 francs in construction, sold for 215,000 francs.

In times of ignorance, superstition could not fail to attach its fables

to the phenomenon of wind-grottoes. A cave near Eisenach was supposed to

be the seat of purgatory, and popular credulity or terror willingly

transformed the sounds produced by the rushing air-currents into the

wailings of tormented souls.

Fortunately, modern science affords us a more satisfactory explanation

of the phenomenon. Pictet represents the case of a cave with cold

currents of air to be much the same as that of a mine with a vertical

shaft ending in a horizontal gallery, of which one extremity is in

communication with the open air, at a point much lower, of course, than

the upper extremity of the shaft. The cave or wind-hole corresponds to

the horizontal gallery, and the various fissures in the rock take the

place of the vertical shaft, and communicate freely with the external

air. In summer the columns of air contained in these fissures assume

nearly the temperature of the rock in which they rest—that is to say,

the mean temperature of the district; and therefore they are heavier

than the corresponding external columns of air which terminate at the

mouth of the cave. The consequence is, that the heavy cool air descends

from the fissures, and streams out into the cave, appearing as a cold

current, and the hotter the day—that is, the lighter the columns of

external air—the more violent will be the disturbance of equilibrium,

and therefore the more palpable the current.

The evaporation which takes place as the air-currents descend through

the moist rock-fissures likewise tends to lower their temperature.

Several naturalists have attempted to explain the phenomena of ice-caves

in a similar manner, as being produced by cold currents still further

refrigerated by the evaporation caused in the moist and porous rocks

through which they pass. But to this theory there are weighty

objections, as in many ice-caves there is no current whatever, and in

all the cases of cold air streams investigated or mentioned by De

Saussure, the lowest temperatures observed were still considerably above

the freezing-point, and consequently incapable of converting water into

ice.

Mr. Browne believes that, in many cases, the phenomenon may be

satisfactorily accounted for by the position and surroundings of the

caves in which it occurs; though, no doubt, cold currents and

evaporation may often have an influence in maintaining the low

temperature of ice-caves.

In every one of the fourteen natural glacières which he visited, the

level at which the ice was found was considerably below the level at the

entrance of the cave; so that, on ordinary principles of gravitation,

the heavy cold air within could not be dislodged by the lighter warm

summer air without. Heat naturally spreads very slowly in a cave like

this; and even when some amount of heat does reach the ice, the latter

melts but slowly, for ice absorbs 60° C. in melting; and thus when ice

is once formed, it becomes a material guarantee for the permanence of

cold in the cave.

Another means for preventing the encroachments of the hotter seasons is

the dense covering of trees and shrubs, which, in the case of many of

the glacières, shields their entrance or their roof from the rays of the

sun, and thus keeps off the effects of direct radiation. Mr. Browne

found all the glacières that came under his observation thus protected,

with the single exception of that of St. Georges, where, in consequence

of an incautious felling of wood immediately near the mouth, trunks of

trees had been laid horizontally over it, to prevent the rays of the sun

from striking down on to the ice. He moreover invariably found that the

entrances to the caves were more or less sheltered against all winds—a

very important condition, as air-currents from without would infallibly

bring in heated air, in spite of the specific weight of the cold air

stored within. There can be no doubt, too, that the large surfaces which

are available for evaporation have much to do with maintaining a

somewhat lower temperature than the mean temperature of the place where

the cave occurs. Another great advantage which some glacières possess

must be borne in mind, namely, the collection of snow at the bottom of

the pit in which the entrance lies. This snow absorbs, in the course of

melting, all the heat which strikes down by radiation, or is driven down

by accidental turns of the wind; and the snow water thus forced into the

cave will, at any rate, not seriously injure the ice.

[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE GLACIÈRE OF ST. GEORGES.]

It is easy to understand how, in caves thus protected against the

influence of summer heat, a great part of the ice accumulated during the

winter may be preserved, and that, for an explanation of the phenomenon,

it is by no means necessary to have recourse to cold blasts descending

from the interior of the rock in which they are situated. It is indeed a

common belief that the ice-caves are colder in summer than in winter,

and consequently contain a greater abundance of ice during the former

season; but this belief may well be considered as one of those popular

fallacies, which—though, by dint of repetition, they come to be common

articles of faith—have in fact no substantial proofs to support them.

CHAPTER XVIII.

ROCK TOMBS AND CATACOMBS.

Biban-el-Moluk, the Royal Tombs of Thebes—The Roman Catacombs—Their

Extent—Their Mode of Excavation—Touching Sepulchral Inscriptions—

Antony Bosio, the Columbus of the Catacombs—The Cavaliere di Rossi—The

Catacombs of Naples and Syracuse—The Catacombs of Paris.

The remoteness of caves and grottoes from the busy haunts of life, their

eternal silence and their nightly gloom, have ever pointed them out as

fit resting-places for the dead. From the earliest times they have been

used as sepulchral vaults, and where nature neglected to hollow out the

rock, it has often been excavated for this purpose by the hand of man.

Thus the Pharaohs of Egypt rested not in temples and mausoleums reared

in the heart of cities, but they chose the desert-ravine for their

sepulchre, and hid their tombs in deep excavations in the earth.

A more impressive scene can hardly be imagined than that which is

afforded by these splendid memorials. Of all such monuments which still

mark the site of ancient Thebes, perhaps none are more striking to the

traveller than the royal tombs—Biban-el-Moluk—which the pride of

monarchs, whose very name is now a mystery, excavated four thousand

years ago in the bosom of the Libyan mountains.

‘The next morning at daybreak,’ says Warburton,[29] ‘we started for the

Tombs of the Kings. I was mounted on a fine horse, belonging to the

sheikh of the village, and the cool air of the morning, the rich

prospect before us, and the cloudless sky, all conspired to impart life

and pleasure to my relaxed and languid frame. I had been for a month

almost confined to my pallet by illness, and now, mounted on a gallant

barb, sweeping across the desert, with the mountain breezes breathing

round me, I felt a glow of spirits and exhilaration of mind and body to

which I had been long a stranger. For a couple of hours we continued

along the plain, which was partially covered with wavy corn, but flecked

widely here and there with desert tracts. Then we entered the gloomy

mountain gorges, through which the Theban monarchs passed to their

tombs. Our path lay through a narrow defile, between precipitous cliffs

of rubble and calcareous strata, and some large boulders of coarse

conglomerate lay strewn along this desolate valley, in which no living

thing of earth or air ever met our view. The plains below may have been,

perhaps, once swarming with life and covered with palaces; but the

gloomy defile we were now traversing must have ever been as they now

are, lonely, lifeless, desolate—a fit avenue to the tombs for which we

were bound.

Footnote 29:

‘The Crescent and the Cross.’

‘After five or six miles’ travel, our guide stopped at the base of one

of the precipices, and, laying his long spear against the rock,

proceeded to light his torches. There was no entrance apparent at the

distance of a few yards, nor was this great tomb betrayed to the outer

world by any visible aperture, until discovered by Belzoni. This

extraordinary man seems to have been one of the few who have hit off in

life the lot for which Nature destined them. His sepulchral instincts

might have been matter of envy to the ghouls; with such unerring

certainty did he guess at the place containing the embalmed corpses most

worthy of his body-snatching energies.

‘We descended by a steep path into this tomb, through a doorway covered

with hieroglyphics, and entered a corridor that ran some hundred yards

into the mountain. It was about twenty feet square, and painted

throughout most elaborately in the manner of Raphael’s Loggia at the

Vatican, with little inferiority of skill or colouring. The doorways

were richly ornamented with figures of a larger size, and over each was

the winged globe or a huge scarabæus. In allusion, probably, to the

wanderings of the freed spirit, almost all the larger emblems on these

walls wore wings, however incompatible with their usual vocations;

boats, globes, fishes, and suns, all were winged. On one of the

corridors there is an allegory of the progress of the sun through the

hours, painted with great detail; the god of day sits in a boat (in

compliment to the Nile he lays aside his chariot here), and steers

through the hours of the day and night, each of the latter being

distinguished by a star. The Nile in this, as in all other circumstances

of Egyptian life, figures as the most important element; even the

blessed souls for its sake assume the form of fishes, and swim about

with angelic fins in this River of Life. One gorgeous passage makes way

into another more gorgeous still, until you arrive at a steep descent.

At the base of this, perhaps 400 feet from daylight, a doorway opens

into a vaulted hall of noble proportions, whose gloom considerably

increases its apparent size. Here the body of Osirei, father of Rameses

the Second, was laid about 3,200 years ago, in the beautiful alabaster

sarcophagus which Belzoni drew from hence, the reward of his enterprise.

Its poor occupant, who had taken such pains to hide himself, was

“undone” for the amusement of a London conversazione.

‘There are numerous other tombs, all full of interest; but as the reader

who is interested in such things will consult higher authorities than

mine, I shall only add that the whole circumstance of ancient Egyptian

life, with all its vicissitudes, may be read in pictures out of these

extraordinary tombs, from the birth, through all the joys and sorrows of

life, to the death, the lamentations over the corpse, the embalmer’s

operations, and finally the judgment and the immortality of the soul. In

one instance the Judge is measuring all men’s good actions in a balance

against a feather from an angel’s wing; in another, a great serpent is

being bound head and foot, and cast into a pit; and there are many other

proofs, equally convincing, of the knowledge that this mysterious people

possessed of a future life and judgment.’

But not the kings alone; the illustrious, the wealthy, the whole nation

reposed in rock-tombs magnificently sculptured or rudely excavated,

according to the means of the defunct. Behind the ruins of the stately

temples of ancient Thebes, which extend from Gourna to Medinet Abou, and

fill the narrow strip of desert between the inundated fields and the

foot of the mountains, lies an interminable necropolis, whose graves,

like the cells of a bee-hive, one close to the other, are hewn in the

rocky ground of the plain, or in the slopes of the neighbouring hills.

These grottoes, originally destined for sarcophagi and mummies, are now

occupied by fellahs and their herds, as they were in the fifth and sixth

century by pious anchorites; and, being roomy and situated at a

considerable height above the plain, may be considered as the most

healthy dwellings of the country.

The oldest graves are hewn in the mountains; and at a later period, when

the rocky plain at their foot alone gave room for these excavations, it

gradually became invaded by the dead. In the more splendid of these

mausoleums, high gates and walls inclosed deep courtyards, scooped out

of the rock, and from these long corridors led to subterranean halls,

profusely decorated with sculptures and paintings.

Similar cities of the dead were found in Upper Egypt, near the cities of

the living, wherever the adjoining rocks allowed them to be excavated.

Those of Syout—the ancient Lycopolis, where along an extent of several

miles the whole declivity of the Libyan mountains is perforated with

graves rising in terraces to their very summit—of El Kab (Eileithyia),

of Assuan (Syene), of Madfuneh (Abydos), of Kan (Antæopolis), and of a

hundred other places, would in any other country excite the wonder of

the traveller; here, where along the Nile one gigantic necropolis

follows upon another, they hardly attract any attention.

But the ancient Egyptians not only embalmed human bodies and preserved

them in rock-tombs, they also converted into mummies the various animals

to which they paid divine homage, and deposited them in subterranean

cavities. This honour was paid to Apis, the ox-god, to the sacred Ibis,

to dogs, cats, and even to the repulsive crocodile.

* * * * *

Besides the Rome of the Cæsars and the Rome of the Popes, there is a

third Rome, scarcely less remarkable than the other two. The two former,

gilded by the warm sunbeam, proudly rise above the banks of the Tiber

with their ruins, palaces, and churches, while the latter lies hidden

beneath the earth.

[Illustration: GALLERY WITH TOMBS.]

From the cupola of St. Peter’s, the most favourable station for a

panoramic view of all the monuments and buildings of the Eternal City,

the eye is also best able to embrace at one glance the general

topography of the catacombs or of subterranean Rome. Fifteen great

consular roads, over which the victorious legions once marched out to

subjugate the world, radiate from the centre of the town, and furrow the

arid Campagna, until they are finally lost in the hazy distance. To the

right and left of these causeways the catacombs have been hollowed out

in the depths of the earth, and, though separated by the Tiber into two

distinct regions, yet their various subdivisions trace a vast circle,

the size of which may be measured by the circumference of the town

itself. To form some idea of their extent, we must fancy an intricate

wilderness of galleries and arched alcoves with their layers of

sarcophagi, one above another; their _lucernaria_, for light or

ventilation; their stairs, straight or winding; and all this, not on one

level only, but floor beneath floor—one, two, three, four, five—hewn out

on a labyrinthine, yet harmonious and economic plan. Network is perhaps

a feeble description of these vast and intricate mazes; a spider’s web

seen through the glass of a naturalist, or rather four or five spiders’

webs, one within the other, would seem a more fitting illustration.

Such is the immensity of this city of the dead that, according to the

opinion of those who have made themselves best acquainted with all its

subdivisions, their galleries, supposing them ranged in a line, would

form a street 900 miles long, and lined by no less than six millions of

tombs!

So vast a necropolis would command attention in any country, or as the

memorial of any age, or of any part of the human race; but to us the

catacombs of Rome are doubly interesting, as the mysterious crypts which

served the first confessors of our faith for the purposes of sepulture

and sometimes of concealment. Their extent at once precludes the idea of

their having been excavated in a clandestine manner, as was at one time

erroneously believed; and, moreover, history tells us that, apart from

some passing storms of persecution, the Christians had as little reason

as the Jews, their religious ancestors, for making a secret of their

faith, or of their places of interment. From the times of the Apostles

their community constantly grew and multiplied throughout the Roman

world—in Rome especially, the centre of that world—and there can be

little doubt that from Nerva to the middle of the reign of Marcus

Aurelius (from 96 to about 166) and so onward to the great persecution

under Decius (A.D. 249–256), the Christians, if exposed here and there

and at times to local persecutions, were growing in unchecked and still

expanding numbers. But as the living community increased, so also must

the number of its dead, a reverence for whom was, among the survivors,

not only a solemn duty but a deep-rooted passion. The Christians not

only inherited from the Jews the ancient usage of interment, but this

respect for the dead was strengthened by the belief that Christ had

risen bodily from the grave, and that a bodily resurrection was to be

their own glorious privilege. Hence the burning of the dead, customary

among the wealthier pagans, was to them a profanation; and as the body

of the slave was as holy as that of his master, it claimed the same

right of decent burial.

But where was room for the spacious burial-places required for so vast a

community?

Within the walls of the city interment was very properly forbidden by

the law, and at a convenient distance beyond its crowded precincts,

large plots of ground could hardly be obtained; but the formation of

subterranean cemeteries on a vast scale was greatly facilitated by the

geological formation of the land. Three different kinds of stone compose

the groundwork of the Roman campagna: the _tufa litoide_, as hard and

durable as granite, which furnished the materials for the palaces and

temples of the Cæsarian city; the _tufa granolare_, which, though

consistent enough to retain the form given it by the excavators, cannot

be hewn or extracted in blocks, and the loose _tufa friabile_, or

_pozzuolana_, which has been extensively used from the earliest ages for

mortar or Roman cement. It is evident that neither the hard lithoid nor

the loose tuff were suitable for the excavation of the catacombs, while

this purpose could be admirably attained in the courses of the granular

tuff, which, though not too hard to be worked, is yet solid enough to

make walls for long and intricate passages, to be hewn into arches

vaulting over deep recesses for the reception of coffins, and to support

floor below floor down to the utmost depth to which the formation

reaches.

Neither in the stone quarries nor in the sand-pits of ancient Rome is

there the slightest sign that they were ever used for the purposes of

sepulture, while in the granular tuff not a yard seems to have been

excavated except for the making of tombs, which line the walls

throughout their prodigious length, as close to one another as the

berths in the sides of a ship. Though the most ancient catacombs were

excavated by the Jews, yet these excavations are of a very limited

extent when compared with those of Christian origin, where, instead of

the seven-branched candlestick and other sacred emblems of the Jewish

persuasion, every ornament or inscription marked or painted upon the

walls bears witness to the faith of those who were deposited—to use the

peculiar and appropriate expression—within these narrow cells.

Everywhere we see Christian symbols only—the horse, emblematic of

strength in the faith; the hunted hare, of persecution; the dove and the

cock, of the Christian virtues of vigilance and meekness; the peacock

and the phœnix, of resurrection; the anchor, of hope in immortality; the

palm-leaf, of the martyr’s triumph over death, and many others.

The sepulchral inscriptions are short and simple, but often extremely

tender and touching, recalling to memory, in a few brief words, the

innocence and purity of life, the beauty and the wisdom, or the amiable,

peace-loving character, of the deceased. The pompous or desponding tone

of the heathen mortuary inscriptions disappears; the Christian ‘sleeps

and sleeps in peace.’ There is no sign of affectation or hypocrisy in

these simple epitaphs, and the ennobling influence of the new creed upon

the spirit of man is, perhaps, nowhere more conspicuous than in the

unostentatious inscriptions traced upon the tombs of its first

confessors.

The use of the catacombs for the various purposes of interment,

assembly, or concealment began, no doubt, with the first persecution

under Nero. Most of the inscriptions however, bear the date of the

fourth or fifth century, and some are evidently of a much later period.

When this custom may have ceased is uncertain, but in the Middle Ages

the catacombs were entirely forgotten, and remained blocked up, until

towards the end of the sixteenth century, when they were reopened and

explored by the indefatigable and courageous Antony Bosio, who devoted

thirty-three years of his life to this labour. During his frequent

wanderings through the Roman Campagna, this zealous archæologist once

found, to the left of the Appian Way, near to the church of Sancta Maria

in Palmis, a brick vault in a field covered with rubbish. He immediately

presumed it to be the entrance of a catacomb, and descended through the

narrow opening. Fired with scientific ardour, he penetrated further and

further into recesses untrodden for centuries by the foot of man. The

passage soon became so narrow and low as to oblige him to creep, but

neither the difficulty of the exploration, nor the fear of being crushed

to death by the crumbling stones, could restrain him; and thus, day

after day, he continued his perilous search, until, finally, a complete

subterranean city revealed itself, although he could not ascertain its

limits, for, however far he might probe its intricacies, new passages

were still branching out on every side, and the maze descended in

several successive stories deeper and deeper into the earth. After

Bosio, other archæologists have continued his researches, and in our

days the Cavaliere de Rossi—to whose indefatigable zeal is due, amongst

others, the discovery of the Catacomb of Callistus, where many of the

early popes have been entombed—has all but completed the topography of

subterranean Rome.

Besides the ancient metropolis of the world, several other old Italian

towns possess remarkable catacombs or subterranean burial-places. Those

of Naples, historically far less interesting than those of Rome, are

executed on a far more spacious plan. They are situated not beneath the

town itself, but in a neighbouring mountain, where they have been

excavated to a distance of more than two miles. Large galleries,

eighteen feet broad, and fourteen or fifteen high, branch out into a

number of smaller passages, while the walls on both sides are pierced,

like those in Rome, with horizontal sepulchral cavities, six, or even

seven, one above the other.

The Catacombs of Syracuse, under the site of the ancient Achradina, are

the largest and best preserved known. They are all excavated in the

solid rock, and form lofty vaults, very different from the narrow and

dangerous burrows of subterranean Rome. A broad gallery runs through the

whole of the labyrinth, and from this many other passages of an inferior

width branch out, leading to large circular vaults with openings at the

top for the admission of light. Many of these have been closed, as they

were equally dangerous for the people in their neighbourhood and their

cattle, so that torches are necessary for visiting them. Along the walls

are a number of niches, which served as sepulchres, so that these

excavations, which originally were quarries, and during the flourishing

times of the city were used by its vast population for various household

purposes, were ultimately converted into a city of the dead.

The Catacombs of Paris, though ancient as quarries, are of a very modern

date as places of sepulture. Until the end of the reign of Louis XVI.

the principal burying-ground of Paris had been the Cemetery of the

Innocents, near the church of the same name. Originally situated beyond

the walls of the town, it had in course of time been so surrounded by

the growing metropolis as to occupy its centre. Here, during nearly ten

centuries, numberless bodies had been deposited, so that, from the

malaria it engendered, it became a constant source of danger to the

living. At length the cemetery became so intolerable a nuisance that its

suppression and conversion into a public market-place was decreed in

1785.

The question now arose where the bones to be displaced should be

deposited, and, from their proximity to the town and their extent, the

ancient quarries were chosen as the most favourable spot for a vast

subterranean necropolis. But these immense excavations, which, having

been abandoned for several centuries, had in many places fallen in,

needed a full year for repairs before they could be safely used for

their new purpose. At length, on April 7, 1787, they were solemnly

consecrated, and the same day the workmen began to remove the bones from

the Cemetery of the Innocents—an operation which needed more than

fifteen months for its completion. Gradually many others of the ancient

cemeteries of Paris were in like manner removed to the catacombs, so

that they are said to contain the bones of more than three millions of

bodies. All these bones are symmetrically piled up along the sides of

the galleries; the apophyses of the large thigh and arm bones are

disposed in front, so as to make a nearly uniform surface, interrupted

from space to space by a row of skulls. Some of the crypts or sepulchral

chambers are rather lugubriously decorated with festoons or pyramids of

skulls and cross-bones, and many of the stone pillars which support the

vaults have likewise received ornaments of the same sexton taste. Sixty-

three staircases lead from different parts of the town into the

catacombs, and are used by the workmen and agents appointed to take care

of the subterranean necropolis; but visitors are admitted only every

three months by the entrance at the Barrière du Maine. A descent of

ninety steps brings them to a narrow gallery, which conducts them, after

several windings to the more roomy vaults where the bones are deposited;

and after wandering for some time among these gloomy memorials which are

piled up on either side, they finally emerge into daylight through

another gallery, similar to the first. No doubt Paris affords many a

more pleasant ramble, but hardly one more interesting, or capable of

making a deeper impression on the mind.

CHAPTER XIX.

CAVES CONTAINING REMAINS OF EXTINCT ANIMALS.

The Cave Hyena and the Cave Bear—The Cavern of Kirkdale—The Moa Caves in

New Zealand—Various Species of Moas—Their enormous size.

Besides their picturesque beauty or their solemn grandeur, some caves

are extremely interesting as containing the bones of _extinct_

quadrupeds or birds. Unrivalled in point of antiquity by the oldest

tombs erected by man, they carry us back to times which, though of

comparatively recent date, are still so far removed from the present day

as almost to terrify the imagination—for how many ages must have

elapsed, and what changes of climate must have taken place, since the

hyena or the tiger inhabited the grottoes of northern Europe?

In many cases the bones found in ossiferous caves must have been washed

into them by currents of water, or else they may be the remains of

animals that accidentally dropped in through holes in the roof; but

there can be no doubt that frequently the caves in which the bones of

extinct carniverous animals have been found, served as their dens while

they were living. The abundance of bony dung associated with the remains

of the hyena, as well as the great number of bones all belonging to one

species which are frequently found congregated in the same cave, is

strongly confirmatory of this opinion, no less than the circumstance

that the walls of several ossiferous caves, when deprived of their

stalactital covering, have been found smoothed or rounded off from the

frequent ingress and egress of their former inhabitants as they squeezed

themselves or dragged their prey through a narrow passage. Besides, the

hyenas and bears of the present day frequently live in caves, thus

justifying the inference that their extinct predecessors had the same

habit.

The antiquity of many of the animal remains found in caves is proved not

only by their being dissimilar to existing species, but by the manner in

which they are entombed. For ages they accumulated on the floor of the

cave, often to a considerable depth, mixed with mud or sand or fragments

of rock—then, when, from a change of level or some other cause, the

cavern became uninhabited, a thick crust of stalagmite was slowly

formed, and burying them all, as under solid stone, preserved them

undisturbed, until some accident revealed their existence after a time

the length of which escapes all calculation. The dim vista into the past

appears still more shadowy in the case of the cavern discovered by Dr.

Schmerling at Choquier about two leagues from Liège, where three

distinct beds of stalagmite were found, and between each of them a mass

of breccia and mud, mixed with quartz, pebbles, and in the three

deposits the bones of extinct quadrupeds!

Ossiferous caves have been found and examined in many parts of the

world: in France, in Belgium, chiefly in the valleys of the Meuse and

its tributaries; in Austria and Hungary, in Germany and England.

It is remarkable that while the remains of a large and extinct species

of bear, although found in our caves, are much more common on the

Continent, the bones of the hyena form by far the largest proportion of

those obtained from the English caverns. Thus under the incrustated

floors of our rock-crevices and hollows, we And the proofs that our

island was once inhabited by brutes which are now confined to Africa and

the adjacent parts of Asia. But the extinct hyena of England was a much

larger and more formidable animal than either the striped hyena of

Abyssinia or the spotted hyena of the Cape, the latter of whom it most

resembled. The abundance of these animals, and the length of the period

during which they inhabited England, may be inferred from Dr. Buckland’s

account of the opening of the celebrated cavern of Kirkdale.

‘The bottom of the cave, on first removing the mud, was found to be

strewed all over, like a dog-kennel, from one end to the other, with

hundreds of teeth and bones, and on some of the bones marks could be

traced, which, on applying one to the other, appeared exactly to fit the

form of the canine teeth of the hyena that occurred in the cave. Mr.

Gibson alone collected more than three hundred canine teeth of the

hyena, which must have belonged to at least seventy-five individuals,

and adding to these the similar teeth I have seen in other collections,

I cannot calculate the total number of hyenas, of which there is

evidence, at less than two or three hundred.’

The grisly bear of the Rocky Mountains (_Ursus ferox_) is the most

ferocious of its race at the present day. It is about nine feet long,

and is said to attain the weight of 800 pounds. Its strength is so

prodigious that even the bison contends with it in vain. But this huge

and formidable animal was surpassed in size and strength by the extinct

bear (_Ursus spelaeus_) which once inhabited the caverns of Europe, at a

time when vast and interminable forests covered the land, and the Rhine

and the Danube flowed through wastes like those through which the

Mackenzie or the Yenissei now find their way to the ocean.

From the proportions of the molar teeth, and from some peculiarities of

appearance and wearing, it has been inferred that this extinct species

lived chiefly on vegetable food; but its prodigious strength, and the

huge canines with which its jaws were armed, enabled it to cope with its

contemporaries, the large Auerox and the teichorhine rhinoceros, and to

defend itself successfully against the large lion or tiger whose remains

have also been found in the caverns of western Europe, and which, if we

may judge by the size of their canine teeth, must have been more than a

match for the largest felides of the present day.

Besides the hyena and the bear, more than a hundred species of extinct

animals have been discovered in our ossiferous caves. In those of

Paviland, Glamorganshire, bones of a primeval elephant have been found;

and in that of Wirksworth, Derbyshire, the almost entire skeleton of a

rhinoceros lay buried in a considerable mass of gravel and osseous

fragments. How the large creature came there is a question that may well

exercise the ingenuity of a geologist.

Though in these and similar cases, the bone-caves have been found to

contain the remains of animals very different from those now existing in

the same region, yet in general they show a remarkable relationship, in

the same land or continent, between the dead and the living. Thus in the

caves of Brazil there are extinct species of all the thirty-two genera,

excepting four, of the terrestrial quadrupeds now inhabiting the

provinces in which the caves occur, such as fossil ant-eaters,

armadilloes, tapirs, peccaries, guanacoes, opossums, and numerous South

American gnawers, monkeys and other animals.

[Illustration: CAVE IN DREAM LEAD MINE, NEAR WIRKSWORTH, DERBYSHIRE.]

The kangaroo, as is well-known, is peculiar to Australia, and caverns in

that country have been described by Sir T. Mitchell, containing fossil

bones of a large extinct kangaroo.

A singular wingless bird, the Apteryx australis, is found only in the

wilds of the interior of New Zealand, where it takes refuge in the

clefts of rocks, hollow trees, or in deep holes which it excavates in

the ground. The caves of that country show us that it was preceded by

other wingless birds of a gigantic structure—the Moas, by the side of

which even the ostriches of the present day would shrink into

comparative insignificance.

These wonderful creatures would probably have remained unknown to the

present day, if, in 1839, the thigh-bone of a Moa had not fallen by

chance into the hands of Professor Owen, who from this single fragment

drew up a surprisingly correct notice of the bird. This memoir, sent out

to New Zealand, gave a stimulus to further researches, and from the

larger quantity of the Moa’s bones now sent to England, Professor Owen

built up the beautiful skeleton which, along with those of the Mylodon

robustus, of the Mammoth, and of the primeval stag, forms one of the

most conspicuous ornaments of the splendid Museum in Lincoln’s Inn

Fields.

But the reconstructive genius of our great palæontologist, not satisfied

with this triumph, has detected a whole group of ostrich-like birds

among the remnants of the past, which the New Zealanders, who, as we may

suppose, are no adepts in comparative anatomy, all confound under the

common name of the Moa; and thus five species of Dinornis, the

Palaeopteryx, the Aptornis, and the comparatively small Notornis, have

been, as it were, resuscitated by a miracle of science. A specimen of

the last-named species of these birds was caught alive in a remote,

unfrequented part of the south island of New Zealand in 1850 by some

sealers, who, ignorant of the value of their prize, killed and devoured

it as if it had been a common turkey. Fortunately, however, the skin of

this unique bird, the link between the living and the dead, the last

perhaps of a race coeval with the gigantic Moas, was preserved from

destruction.

The largest species of Moa (_Dinornis robustus_) must have stood, when

alive, about thirteen or fourteen feet high, since Dr. Thomson saw a

complete leg, which stood six feet from the ground. Like the ostrich,

this feathered giant was incapable of flight, its rudimentary wings

being unable to raise it from the ground. It had three toes on each

foot, and tradition says that its feathers were beautiful and gaudy.

Portions of the eggs of the bird have been found among their bones, of a

sufficient size to estimate the probable size of a whole egg, and the

conclusion is that the hat of a full-grown man would have been a proper-

sized egg-cup for it. From the structure of the toes, which were well

adapted for digging up roots, and from the traditional report that the

Moas were in the habit of swallowing stones to promote digestion, it may

be concluded that they were herbivorous.

This is about as much as we know of the aspect and habits of this

colossal Struthionide, whose apparent confinement to the small New

Zealandic group is one of the most curious enigmas of its history. As it

is extremely improbable that so gigantic a race was originally formed

for so narrow a sphere, we are led to believe that New Zealand is but

the remnant of a vast continent now whelmed under the waves of the

Pacific.

When the group was first peopled by the Maories, about five hundred

years ago, the Moas had already become excessively rare, and the last of

them seem to have perished during the seventeenth century, though the

New Zealanders believe that some of them still live in the remote and

unfrequented wilds of their native land.

The bones of the various species of Moa have been partly found in

morasses, partly in the beds of mountain torrents, but chiefly in

various caves, which, no doubt, served the living animals as dwellings

or places of refuge.

One of these caverns, called by the New Zealanders ‘Te Anaoteatua,’ or

the Cave of the Spirit, was visited by Dr. Thomson,[30] who describes it

as very remarkable. It is situated in the tertiary, extremely cavernous,

and undermined limestone mountain chain which extends along the west

coast of the northern island, and whose picturesque beauties and natural

curiosities are destined to occupy a conspicuous place in some future

guide-book. Its entrance, resembling the gateway of an old castle, is

concealed by a thick foliage of shrubs, and a dark green creeper adheres

to the limestone rock and covers the opening. The cave extends in a

tortuous direction underneath the hill for upwards of a mile, and

consists of several different passages. From its roof and sides numerous

stalactites are hanging, some of them six feet long, and composed of

transparent calcareous spar, while others have a red tint. In that part

of the cave which Dr. Thomson explored, there were three openings in the

roof at different places, each from ten to fifteen feet in

circumference, through which light was seen streaming in, one hundred

and fifty feet above the head. Immediately below these openings there

were heaps of wood and _débris_ washed down from the surface; but these

openings did not throw much light into the cave, so that even during the

day it was perfectly dark. A subterranean stream of water runs through

part of it, and then disappears under the rock.

Footnote 30:

‘On the Moa Caves of New Zealand.’ Edinburgh New Philosophical

Journal, vol. lvi. 1854.

Before the introduction of Christianity, this cave was held in the

greatest terror by all New Zealanders, and no one would have ventured to

enter it; but as Moa bones fetch a high price, the love of money at

length conquered the superstitious fears of some Christian natives, and

their boldness was rewarded by a tolerably rich harvest of bones,

although their search was made in a very hasty and imperfect manner.

Another cave situated in the same neighbourhood, and bearing the

indigenous name of ‘Te Anaotemoa’ or the Cave of the Moa, did not enjoy

the privilege of spiritual protection, and the Maories were in the habit

of resorting to it to procure the skulls of the Moas, to keep the powder

which they used for tattooing, and their long bones for the manufacture

of fish-hooks, before they became acquainted with the use of iron.

The Cave of the Moa is in a limestone hill, with two openings, one

towards the north-east and the other towards the south-west. The north-

east opening has evidently been caused by the falling in of the roof,

and is apparently of no great age; the south-west entrance is 14 feet

high and 10 feet broad, and covered over with trees and bushes. The cave

is 165 feet long, the greatest breadth 28 feet, and the height 60 feet.

The roof is oval, and numerous stalactites drop gracefully from it,

giving a cathedral-like effect to the whole. One part of the floor is

covered over with calcareous spar, another part with a large deposit of

soft stalagmites, and the part of the floor furthest distant from the

south-west opening is covered with earth, limestones, and mud, which

appear to have fallen down when the roof of the cave gave way, which now

forms the north-east opening. It is under this earth, and the soft

deposit of carbonate of lime, that the Moas’ bones are found. Dr.

Thomson got only four skulls in this cave, and the scarcity of them was

accounted for by their use in former days as powder-holders. There was

nothing to lead him to think that these bones had been deposited in the

cave by water, for he found a remnant of almost every bone in the body,

from the spine and the rings of the trachea down to the last bone of the

toes. The bones belonged to the largest and also to the smaller species

of Moas.

It would require several days’ labour of many men to clear out the

bottom of this cave properly, in order to see what bones it contains;

but, as far as Dr. Thomson saw, there were no osseous remains of man or

of any animals, except Moas, in it, nor any marks of fire, sculpture,

nor figures of any kind on the walls of the cave.

There are, no doubt, many other grottoes and cavities containing Moas’

bones in the islands, but they are carefully kept secret by the natives,

as, on account of the high price paid for the bones, they may almost be

regarded as small gold-mines.

CHAPTER XX.

SUBTERRANEAN RELICS OF PREHISTORIC MAN.

The Peat Mosses of Denmark—Shell Mounds—Swiss Lacustrine Dwellings—

Ancient Mounds in the Valley of the Mississippi—The Caves in the

Valley of the Meuse—Dr. Schmerling—Human Skulls in the Cave of Engis—

Explorations of Sir Charles Lyell in the Cave of Engihoul—Caverns of

Brixham—Caves of Gower—the Sepulchral Grotto of Aurignac—Flint

Implements discovered in the Valley of the Somme—Gray’s Inn Lane an

ancient Hunting Ground for Mammoths.

Among the various researches of geologists, there are perhaps none of a

more general interest than those which relate to the antiquity of the

human race. We would gladly know whether those strata and caves which

contain so many relics of the past afford us also some insight into the

primitive condition of man—some indication of the times when he first

appeared upon the stage of life. Within the last years many discoveries

have been made which have thrown light upon the subject, and proved

that, though man, geologically speaking, is of recent origin, and

probably the youngest born of creation, his ancestry still stretches

back at least as far as that remote period when the huge Mammoth ranged

over the north, when the cavern bear and the cavern hyena tenanted the

excavations of our limestone hills, and the uncouth form of the

rhinoceros brushed through the dense primeval forests of our land. In

the following pages I intend briefly to point out some of the most

interesting of these discoveries.

The peat-mosses of Denmark, varying in depth from ten to thirty feet,

show their enormous antiquity by the changes which have taken place in

the vegetation of the land since the first periods of their growth. At

their lowest levels lie thick prostrate trunks of the Scotch fir, which

must once have grown on their margin, but which is not now, nor has ever

been in historical times, a native of the Danish isles. At higher levels

the pines disappear, and are supplanted by the sessile variety of the

common oak, while still higher occurs the pedunculated variety of the

same oak, now in its turn almost superseded by the common beech. It is

impossible to calculate the number of ages needed to bring about these

vast changes in the forest scenery of Denmark—a very moderate estimate

carries them back seven thousand years—but at every depth in the peat,

and under all these various trees, implements and other articles of

human workmanship have been found, which show that, since the appearance

of man, the fir and the oak have successively flourished and

disappeared.

In addition to the peat-mosses, the Danish ‘shell-mounds’ throw some

light on the prehistoric ages of that northern land. These mounds, or

‘refuse-heaps,’ consisting chiefly of thousands of cast-away shells of

the oyster, cockle, and other molluscs of existing species, may be seen

at certain points along the shores of nearly all the Danish islands. The

shells are plentifully mixed up with the bones of various quadrupeds,

birds, and fishes, which served as the food of the savages by whom the

mounds were accumulated, while scattered all through them are rude

implements of stone, horn, wood, and bone, with fragments of coarse

pottery, mixed with charcoal and cinders, but never any implements of

bronze or of iron. Similar refuse-heaps are found near the huts of many

wild nations of the present day, as, for instance, near the miserable

wigwams of the Fuegians, who live chiefly upon limpets.

The most striking proof that the Danish refuse-heaps are very old is

derived from the character of their imbedded shells. These, indeed,

belong entirely to living species, but the common eatable oyster is now

unknown in the brackish waters of the Baltic, and the eatable mussels,

cockles, and periwinkles, which in the refuse-heaps are as large as

those which grow in the open sea, now only attain a third of their

natural size. Hence we may confidently infer that in the days when the

savage inhabitants of the Danish coasts accumulated these heaps, the

ocean must have had freer access than now to the Baltic, and mixed its

waters through broader channels with those of that inland sea.

As in the peat-bogs the implements and weapons found buried with the

Scotch fir are all made of stone, whereas those coinciding with the oak

epoch are made of bronze, we may farther conclude that the stone

hatchets and knives of the refuse-heaps likewise belong to the same

distant period when evergreen forests flourished in the Danish isles.

The ancient Swiss lacustrine dwellings, so frequently mentioned of late

years, afford us another highly interesting glimpse into remote

prehistoric ages. They seem first to have attracted attention during the

dry season of 1853–4, when the lakes and rivers were unusually low, and

when the inhabitants of Meilen on the Lake of Zurich resolved to raise

the level of some ground, by throwing upon it the mud obtained by

dredging in the adjoining shallow water. During these dredging

operations they discovered a number of wooden piles deeply driven into

the bed of the lake, and, among them, many stone instruments, fragments

of rude pottery, fishing gear, and the bones of various animals; those

which contained marrow being split open, in the same way as those found

in the Danish shell-mounds.[31]

Footnote 31:

See also the article on Lacustrine Abodes, in the Edin. Review, July

1862.

The ruins thus unexpectedly brought to light were evidently those of a

village of unknown date, and since then many other hill-dwellings (more

than a hundred and fifty in all) have been detected near the borders of

the Swiss lakes, at points where the depth of water does not exceed

fifteen feet. Such aquatic sites were probably selected as places of

safety, since they could be approached only by a narrow bridge or by

boats, and the water would serve for protection alike against wild

animals and human foes. The relative age of the pile-dwellings is

clearly illustrated by the nature of the relics that lie scattered among

their ruins. In some, only bronze utensils or ornaments are found; in

others all the articles are of stone. The former, indicating an advance

in civilisation, are evidently of a more recent age, but, even among the

villages of the stone period, some are of later date than others, as

they exhibit signs of an improved state of the arts. Thus we have here a

long perspective into an unknown past, for even the bronze villages are

probably of an age long antecedent to the Roman period. The oldest stone

settlements are perhaps as old as the times of the Danish refuse-heaps;

but even among their ruins, some domesticated animals occur, namely, the

ox, sheep, goat, and dog, and the appearance of three cereals indicates

that the population had already made some progress in the agricultural

arts. Amber ornaments, which could only have found their way from the

Baltic, as also hatchets and wedges of jade, of a kind not occurring in

Switzerland or in the adjoining parts of Europe, and which some

mineralogists would derive from the East, prove the existence of an

active commercial intercourse, even at that early age, which the Swiss

archæologists and geologists carry back as far as 7,000 years.

In the basin of the Mississippi, and especially in the valley of the

Ohio and its tributaries, many large mounds have been found, which have

served in some cases for temples, in others for outlook or defence, and

in others for sepulture. Some of these earthworks are on so grand a

scale as to embrace areas of fifty or a hundred acres within a simple

inclosure; and the solid contents of one mound are estimated at twenty

millions of cubic feet, equal to about one-fourth of the bulk of the

Great Pyramid of Egypt. From several of these repositories pottery and

ornamental sculpture have been taken, as also weapons made of unpolished

hornstone and various articles in silver and copper. An active

commercial intercourse must have existed between the Ohio mound-builders

and the natives of distant regions, as mica from the Alleghanies, sea-

shells from the Gulf of Mexico, obsidian from the Mexican mountains, and

implements made of native copper from Lake Superior, have been found

among the buried articles.

The extraordinary number of the mounds implies a long period during

which a settled agricultural population, considerably advanced in the

industrial arts, occupied the fertile valleys or the alluvial plains in

the basin of the Mississippi, covered, since then, with vast forests,

and tenanted by wild hunters without any traditionary connexion with

their more civilised predecessors. The epoch when this people

flourished, or the adverse circumstances which swept them away, are all

equally unknown; but the age and nature of the trees found growing on

some of their earthworks afford at least some data for estimating the

minimum of time which must have passed since the mounds were abandoned.

Trunks, displaying eight hundred rings of annual growth, have been cut

down from them, and several generations of trees must have lived and

died before the mounds could have been overspread with that variety of

species which they supported when the white man first set foot in the

valley of the Ohio. In a memoir on this subject, General Harrison, who

was skilled in woodcraft, observes that ‘beyond all doubt no trees were

allowed to grow so long as the earthworks were in use; and when they

were forsaken, the ground, like all newly cleared ground in Ohio, would

for a time be monopolised by one or two species of tree, such as the

yellow locust and the black or white walnut. When the individuals which

were the first to get possession of the ground had died out one after

the other, they would in many cases, instead of being replaced by the

same species, be succeeded (by virtue of the law which makes a rotation

of crops profitable in agriculture) by other kinds, till at last, after

a great number of centuries (several thousand years, perhaps), that

remarkable diversity of species characteristic of North America, and far

exceeding what is seen in European forests, would be established.’