CHAPTER I

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CLIFF CASTLES AND CAVE DWELLINGS OF EUROPE

BY

S. BARING-GOULD, M.A.

[Illustration: CLIFF-CASTLE, BRENGUES. In this castle the Bishop of

Cahors took refuge from the English, to whom he refused to submit, and

in it he died in 1367. It was however captured by the English in 1377.]

"The house i' the rock

. . . no life to ours."

CYMBELINE III. 3.

PREFACE

When in 1850 appeared the Report of the Secretary of War for the United

States, containing Mr. J. H. Simpson's account of the Cliff Dwellings

in Colorado, great surprise was awakened in America, and since then

these remains have been investigated by many explorers, of whom I need

only name Holmes' "Report of the Ancient Ruins in South-West Colorado

during the Summers of 1875 and 1876," and Jackson's "Ruins of South-

West Colorado in 1875 and 1877." Powell, Newberry, &c., have also

described them. A summary is in "Prehistoric America," by the Marquis

de Nadaillac, 1885, and the latest contribution to the subject are

articles in _Scribner's Magazine_ by E. S. Curtis, 1906 and 1909.

The Pueblos Indians dwell for the most part at a short distance from

the Rio Grande; the Zuñi, however, one of their best known tribes, are

settled far from that river, near the sources of the Gila. In the

Pueblos country are tremendous cañons of red sandstone, and in their

sides are the habitations of human beings perched on every ledge in

inaccessible positions. Major Powell, United States Geologist,

expressed his amazement at seeing nothing for whole days but

perpendicular cliffs everywhere riddled with human dwellings resembling

the cells of a honeycomb. The apparently inaccessible heights were

scaled by means of long poles with lateral teeth disposed like the

rungs of a ladder, and inserted at intervals in notches let into the

face of the perpendicular rock. The most curious of these dwellings,

compared to which the most Alpine chalet is of easy access, have ceased

to be occupied, but the Maqui, in North-West Arizona, still inhabit

villages of stone built on sandstone tables, standing isolated in the

midst of a sandy ocean almost destitute of vegetation.

The cause of the abandonment of the cliff dwellings has been the

diminished rainfall, that rendering the land barren has sent its

population elsewhere. The rivers, the very streams, are dried up, and

only parched water-courses show where they once flowed.

"The early inhabitants of the region under notice were wonderfully

skilful in turning the result of the natural weathering of the rocks to

account. To construct a cave-dwelling, the entrance to the cave or the

front of the open gallery was walled up with adobes, leaving only a

small opening serving for both door and window. The cliff houses take

the form and dimensions of the platform or ledge from which they rise.

The masonry is well laid, and it is wonderful with what skill the walls

are joined to the cliff, and with what care the aspect of the

neighbouring rocks has been imitated in the external architecture."

[Footnote: Nadaillac, "Prehistoric America," Lond. 1885, p. 205.]

In Asia also these rock-dwellings abound. The limestone cliffs of

Palestine are riddled with them. They are found also in Armenia and in

Afghanistan. At Bamian, in the latter, "the rocks are perforated in

every direction. A whole people could put up in the 'Twelve Thousand

Galleries' which occupy the slopes of the valley for a distance of

eight miles. Isolated bluffs are pierced with so many chambers that

they look like honeycombs." [Footnote: Reclus, "Asia," iii. p. 245.]

That Troglodytes have inhabited rocks in Africa has been known since

the time of Pliny.

But it has hardly been realised to what an extent similar cliff

dwellings have existed and do still exist in Europe.

In 1894, in my book, "The Deserts of Southern France," I drew attention

to rock habitations in Dordogne and Lot, but I had to crush all my

information on this subject into a single chapter. The subject,

however, is too interesting and too greatly ramified to be thus

compressed. It is one, moreover, that throws sidelights on manners and

modes of life in the past that cannot fail to be of interest. The

description given above of cliff dwellings in Oregon might be employed,

without changing a word, for those in Europe.

To the best of my knowledge, the theme of European Troglodytes has

remained hitherto undealt with, though occasional mention has been made

of those on the Loire. It has been taken for granted that cave-dwellers

belonged to a remote past in civilised Europe; but they are only now

being expelled in Nottinghamshire and Shropshire, by the interference

of sanitary officers.

Elsewhere, the race is by no means extinct. In France more people live

underground than most suppose. And they show no inclination to leave

their dwellings. Just one month ago from the date of writing this page,

I sketched the new front that a man had erected to his paternal cave at

Villiers in Loir et Cher. The habitation was wholly subterranean, but

then it consisted of one room alone. The freshly completed face was cut

in freestone, with door and window, and above were sculptured the aces

of hearts, spades, and diamonds, an anchor, a cogwheel and a fish.

Separated from this mansion was a second, divided from it by a buttress

of untrimmed rock, and this other also was newly fronted, occupied by a

neat and pleasant-spoken woman who was vastly proud of her cavern

residence. "Mais c'est tout ce qu'on peut désirer. Enfin on s'y trouve

très bien."

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PREHISTORIC CAVE-DWELLERS

Formation of chalk--Of dolomitic limestone--Where did the first men

live--Their Eden in the chalk lands--Migration elsewhere--Pit

dwellings--Civilisation stationary--Troglodytes--Antiquity of man--Les

Eyzies--Hôtel du Paradis--The first colonists of the Vézère Valley--

Their artistic accomplishments--Painting and sculpture--Rock dwellings

in Champagne--Of a later period--Civilisation does not progress

uniformly--The earth--Book of the Revelation of the past--La Laugerie

Basse--Blandas--Conduché--Grotte de Han--The race of Troglodytes not

extinct

CHAPTER II

MODERN TROGLODYTES

Troglodytes of the Etang de Berre--The underground town of Og, King of

Bashan--Trôo--Sanitation--Ancient mode of disposing of refuse--The

talking well--Les Roches--Chateau de Bandan--Chapel of S. Gervais--La

Grotte des Vierges--Rochambeau--Le Roi des Halles--La Roche Corbon--

Human refuse at Ezy--Saumur--Are there still pagans among them?--

Bourré--Courtineau--The basket-makers of Villaines--Grioteaux--Sauliac

--Cuzorn--Brantôme--La Roche Beaucourt--The Swabian Alb--Sibyllen loch--

Vrena Beutlers Höhle--Schillingsloch--Schlössberg Höhle--Rock village

in Sicily--In the Crimea--In Egypt--In volcanic breccia--Balmes de

Montbrun--Grottoes de Boissière--Grottoes de Jonas--The rock Ceyssac--

The sandstone cave-dwellings of Corrèze--Their internal arrangement--

Cluseaux--Cave-dwellings in England--In Nottinghamshire--In

Staffordshire--In Cornwall--In Scotland--The savage in man--Reversion

to savagery--The Gubbins--A stone-cutter--Daniel Gumb--A gentleman of

Sens--Toller of Clun Downs

CHAPTER III

SOUTERRAINS

Prussian invasion of Bohemia--Adersbach and Wickelsdorf labyrinths--

Refuges of the Israelites--Gauls suffocated in caves by Cæsar--

Armenians by Corbulo--Story of Julius Sabinus--Saracen invasion--The

devastation of Aquitaine by Pepin--Rock refuges in Quercy--The

Northmen--Persecution of the Albigenses--The cave of Lombrive--The

English domination of Guyenne--Two kinds of refuges--Saint Macaire--

Alban--Refuge of Château Robin--Exploration--Methods of defence--

Souterrain of Fayrolle--Of Saint Gauderic--Of Fauroux--Of Olmie--

Aubeterre--Refuges under castles--Enormous number of souterrains in

France--Victor Hugo's account of those in Brittany--Refuges resorted to

in the time of the European War--Those in Picardy--Gapennes--Some

comparatively modern--Condition of the peasantry during the Hundred

Years' War--Tyranny of the nobles--Their barbarities--Refuges in

Ireland--In England--The Dene Holes--at Chislehurst--At Tilbury--Their

origin--Fogous in Cornwall--Refuges in Haddingtonshire--In Egg--

Slaughter of the Macdonalds--Refuges in the Isle of Rathlin--Massacre

by John Norris--Refuges in Crete--Christians suffocated in one by the

Turks--Lamorciere in Algeria. . . . . .

CHAPTER IV

CLIFF REFUGES

Distinction between souterrain and cliff refuges--How these latter were

reached--Gazelles--Peuch Saint Sour--Story of S. Sour--The Roc d'Aucor

--Exploration--How formerly reached--Boundoulaou--Riou Ferrand--Cliff

refuge near Brengues--Les Mées--Fadarelles--Puy Labrousse--Soulier-de-

Chasteaux--Refuges in Auvergne--Meschers--In Ariège--The Albigenses--

Caves in Derbyshire--Reynard's cave--Cotton's cave--John Cann's cave--

Elford's cave on Sheep's Tor.... 103-116

CHAPTER V

CLIFF CASTLES. THE ROUTIERS

The seigneural castle--Protection sought against the foes without and

against the peasant in revolt--Instance of the Château Les Eyzies--

Independence of the petty nobles--Condition of the country in France--

In Germany--Weakness of the Emperor--The Raubritter--Italy--The nobles

brought into the towns--Their towers--Division of the subject--

Difference between the English manor-house and the foreign feudal

castle--The English in France--The Hundred Years' War--Hopeless

condition of the people--The Free Companies--How recruited--Crusade

against the Albigenses--Barons no better than Routiers--Death of

chivalry--Routiers were rarely Englishmen--Had no scruples as to whom

they served--Disregarded treaties--The captains were Gascons or French

--The nobles of the south on the English side--Nests in the rock--

Depopulation and devastation--Insolence of the Companies--Bigaroque--

Roc de Tayac--Corn--Roquefort--Brengues--The Bishop of Cahors dies

there--Château du Diable at Cabrerets--Défilé des Anglais--Peyrousse--

Les Roches du Tailleur--Trosky--The scolding women--The English not

forgotten in Guyenne . . . . . 117-141

CHAPTER VI

CLIFF CASTLES--_Continued_

The difference between feudal castles and those of the Routiers--

Illustration of the character of the nobles--Two Counts of Perigord--

The nobles in Auvergne--"Les grands Jours"--La Roche Saint Christophe--

Surprised and destroyed--Reoccupied by the Huguenots--Final

destruction--La Roche Gageac--Its history--Jean Tarde--Ravages of the

Huguenots--Gluges--La Roche Lambert--Habichstein--Bürgstein--The spy--

Kronmetz--Covolo--Puxerloch--The shadowless man--Nottingham Castle--

Arrest of Mortimer--Outmost castles--La Grotte de Jioux--Clovis

crosses the Vienne--Le Gué du Loir--Antoine de Bourbon--Calvin at

Saint Saturnin--His cave--La Roche Corail--Cave in which the "Institute

of the Christian Religion" was written--Effects produced by this work

--Preparation of men's minds for reform--Havoc wrought to art by the

Calvinists--La Rochebrune--A cave-colander--Necessity for outlook

stations--Frontier fortifications

CHAPTER VII

SUBTERRANEAN CHURCHES

Basilicas and catacumbal churches--Preference of the people for the

latter--The cult of martyrs encouraged this--Crypts--Elevation of

relics--Church of SS. John and Paul on the Coelian Hill--Temples were

originally sepulchres--Basilican churches converted into mausoleums--

Dedications--Altars of wood changed for altars of stone--At first the

bodies of martyrs were not dismembered--But dismemberment was made

necessary by the transformation--The Martyrium of Poitiers--S. Emilion

--Carvings--Crypt--Aubeterre--A Huguenot stronghold--Orders issued by

Jeanne d'Albret--Her extended powers--The monolithic church--Menaced by

ruin--Rocamadour--Lirac--Mimet--Caudon--Natural caves used as

churches--Gurat--Lanmeur--Story of S. Melor--Dolmen Chapel of the

Seven Sleepers--Another at Cangas-de-Ones--Confolens--Subterranean

churches in Egypt--In Crete--The sacred caves in Palestine--Revival of

cave sanctuaries by the Crusaders--Springs of water in crypts

CHAPTER VIII

ROCK HERMITAGES

Tibetian recluses--Christian hermits in Syria and Egypt--The Essenes

and Therapeutæ--Description by Philo of the latter--Buddhist and

Manichæean influence--Difference in motive--Likeness superficial--

Possible necessity for the adoption of asceticism--Instance of

extravagant asceticism in Syria--Extravagances in Ireland--In England

--Early European solitaries--The Beatus Höhle--Grotto of S. Cybard--

Decadence--Hermits in Languedoc--In Germany--A grocer hermit--

Hermitage at S. Maurice--The Wild Kirchlein--The cave of S. Verena at

Soleure--That of Magdalen at Freiburg--Oberstein--Hermitage at Brive--

La Sainte Beaume--Sougé--Villiers--Montserrat--Subiaco--La Vernia--

Warkworth--Knaresborough--Robin Hood's stable--Roche--Anchor Church--

Royston cave--Its carvings--Kindly remembrance of the hermit--The

hermit a loss

CHAPTER IX

ROCK MONASTERIES

The hermits self-excommunicate--Liability to create a schism--S. Paul--

S. Mary of Egypt--S. Anthony--Enormous number of solitaries compels

organisation into monasteries--Causes inducing flight to the desert--S.

Athanasius at Trèves--Writes the "Life of S. Anthony"--Impulse given to

flight from the world in the West--S. Martin--Desires to imitate the

Lives of the Fathers of the Desert--At Poitiers--Founds Ligugé--Rock

cells--Later history and ruin--Martin becomes Bishop of Tours--Founds

Marmoutier--History and ruin--Martin and the masqueraders--Present

state--Baptistry--The Seven Sleepers--Brice elected bishop--Obliged to

fly the see--Return and penance--Cave of S. Leobard--Abbey of Brantôme

--Underground church--Other caves--"Papists' Holes" at Nottingham--Rock

monastery of Meteora--Der el Adra--Inkermann

CHAPTER X

CAVE ORACLES

Polignac--Greek oracles--Charonion--Cave of the Nymphs--Exhalations--

Delos--Care of Trophonios--Experiences of Pausanius--Cave at Acharaca

--Sibylline oracles--Destruction--Forged oracles--Oracles among the

Jews--Story of Hallbjörn--Sounds issuing from caves--Echo--Æolian cave

of Terni--Purgatory of S. Patrick--The Knight Owain--Visit by Sir

William Lisle--By a monk of Eymstadt--Prohibited by Alexander VI.--

Prohibition rescinded by Pius III.--Destroyed in 1622--Revival of

pilgrimages--Description by Gough--Friar Conrad--Lazarus Aigner--

Roderic, King of the Goths--Sortes Sacræ--Condemned by the Church--

Nevertheless practised--Instances from Gregory of Tours--Incubation in

pagan shrines--The cave of Cybele--Temples of Isis and Esculapius--

Churches founded by Constantino dedicated to S. Michael--Incubation

practiced in them--Instances--Churches of S. Cosmas and Damian--

Practice at Caerleon--Superstition hard to kill--Grotto of Lourdes

CHAPTER XI

ROBBERS' DENS

Humphrey Kynaston--His adventurous life--Cave at Ness Cliff--Chinamen--

David at Adullam--Bandit caves in Palestine--Lombrive--Surtshellir--

Feruiden's cave--Gargas--La Crouzafce--The haunts of Grettir--

Dunterton--Precautions against burglary--Story of K. F. Masch--His

capture--The Leichtweishohle--Adersbach retreats--Babinsky--His capture

CHAPTER XII

BOOK SEPULCHRES

Difference between the tombs of the Israelites and those of the

Egyptians--The reason for this--Jewish catacombs at Rome--Christian

catacombs--Puticoli--Numerous catacombs--Those of Syracuse--Those of

Paris--Crypts became vaults for kings and nobles--Desecration--That of

Louis XI.--The instinct of immortality--Cave burials--In the Petit

Morin--Scandinavian burials--Death regarded as suspended animation--

Hervor at the cairn of Angantyr--The cairn-breaking of Gest--The barrow

of Gunnar--Sigrun visits her husband in his cairn--The story of Asmund

and Asvid--The same ideas in Christian times--Mamertinus and

Corcodemus--"De Miraculis Mortuorum"--Ancestor worship--Persistence of

usages derived from a remote antiquity--Neglect of thought of the dead

--Double nature of man--The spiritual world--A walking postman--

Conclusion

INDEX

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

CLIFF CASTLE, BRENGUES

CAVE DWELLERS AT DUCLAIR

SAULIAC (_Photo by_ GIBMA)

GRIOTEAUX

LA ROCHEBRUNE

SKETCH PLAN OF ROCK STABLE, COMMARQUES

PLAN OF ROCK HOLES IN NOTTINGHAM PARK

DRAKELOW

AUBETERRE

PLAN OF THE REFUGE OF CHÂTEAU ROBIN

THE CHÂTEAU OF FAYROLLES

CLUSEAU DE FAUROUX

LA ROCHE GAGEAC

LE PEUCH S. SOUR

CAVES OF MESCHERS

CAVE REFUGE AT SOULIER DE CHASTEAU

LE DÉFILÉ DES ANGLAIS, LOT (_Photo by_ BAUDEL, S. CÉRÉ)

CHÂTEAU DES ANGLAIS, BRENGUES

CHÂTEAU DU DIABLE, CABRERETS (EXTERIOR)

CHÂTEAU DU DIABLE, CABRERETS (INTERIOR) (_Photo by_ BAUDEL, S.

CÉRÉ)

CORN, LOT (_Photo by_ BAUDEL, S. CÉRÉ)

CHÂTEAU DES ANGLAIS, AUTOIRE (_Photo by_ BAUDEL, S. CÉRÉ)

COVOLO

LA ROCHE DU TAILLEUR

KRONMETZ

THE PUXERLOCH, STYRIA

HABICHSTEIN, BOHEMIA

ROCK MONASTERY, NOTTINGHAM PARK

ROCK MONASTERY, NOTTINGHAM PARK

LA ROCHE CORAIL

LA ROCHE CORAIL THE FIRST HALL

GUÉ DE LOIR

LES ROCHES

PLAN OF MARTYRIUM

MONOLITHIC CHURCH OF S. EMILION

AUBETERRE, CHARENTE, INTERIOR OP MONOLITHIC CHURCH (_Photo by_

DELAGE)

ROCAMADOUR (_Photo by_ BAUDEL, S. CÉRÉ)

AUBETERRE, CHARENTE (_Photo by_ DELAGE)

SUBTERRANEAN CHURCH, AUBETERRE (_Photo by_DELAGE)

DOLMEN CHAPEL OF THE SEVEN SLEEPERS

PLAN OF DOLMEN CHAPEL NEAR PLOUARET

PLAN OF CHAPEL OF S. AMADOU

SCULPTURE IN ROYSTON CAVE (_Photo by_ R.H. CLARK, ROYSTON)

SCULPTURE IN ROYSTON CAVE (_Photo by_ R.H. CLARK, ROYSTON)

ROYSTON CAVE (_Photo by_ R. H. CLARK, ROYSTON)

CHATEAU DE RIGNAC

LE TROU BOUROU

ROCK BAPTISTERY OF ST. MARTIN

TRIUMPH OF CHRIST OVER DEATH (_Photo by_ LACROIX)

CAVES OF LIGUGÉ

NESS CLIFF

KYNASTON'S CAVE

CLIFF CASTLES AND CAVE DWELLINGS OF EUROPE

CHAPTER I

PREHISTORIC CAVE-DWELLERS

In a vastly remote past, and for a vastly extended period, the mighty

deep rolled over the surface of a world inform and void, depositing a

sediment of its used up living tenants, the microscopic cases of

foraminiferæ, sponges, sea-urchins, husks, and the cast limbs of

crustaceans. The descending shells of the diatoms like a subaqueous

snow gradually buried the larger dejections. This went on till the

sediment had attained a thickness of over one thousand feet. Then the

earth beneath, heaved and tossed in sleep, cast off its white

featherbed, projected it on high to become the chalk formation that

occupies so distinct and extended a position in the geological

structure of the globe. The chalk may be traced from the North of

Ireland to the Crimea, a distance of about 11,140 geographical miles,

and, in an opposite direction, from the South of Sweden to Bordeaux, a

distance of 840 geographical miles.

It extends as a broad belt across France, like the sash of a Republican

mayor. You may travel from Calais to Vendôme, to Tours, Poitiers,

Angoulême, to the Gironde, and you are on chalk the whole way. It

stretches through Central Europe, and is seen in North Africa. From the

Crimea it reaches into Syria, and may be traced as far as the shores of

the sea of Aral in Central Asia.

The chalk is not throughout alike in texture; hard beds alternate with

others that are soft--beds with flints like plum-cake, and beds

without, like white Spanish bread.

We are accustomed in England to chalk in rolling downs, except where

bitten into by the sea, but elsewhere it is riven, and presents cliffs,

and these cliffs are not at all like that of Shakespeare at Dover, but

overhang, where hard beds alternate with others that are friable. These

latter are corroded by the weather, and leave the more compact

projecting like the roofs of penthouses. They are furrowed

horizontally, licked smooth by the wind and rain. Not only so, but the

chalk cliffs are riddled with caves, that are ancient water-courses.

The rain falling on the surface is drunk by the thirsty soil, and it

sinks till, finding where the chalk is tender, it forms a channel and

flows as a subterranean rill, spouts forth on the face of the crags,

till sinking still lower, it finds an exit at the bottom of the cliff,

when it leaves its ancient conduit high and dry.

But before the chalk was tossed aloft there had been an earlier

upheaval from the depths of the ocean, that of the Jurassic limestone.

This was built up by coral insects working indefatigably through long

ages, piling up their structures, as the sea-bottom slowly sank,

straining ever higher, till at length their building was crushed

together and projected on high, to form elevated plateaux, as the

Causses of Quercy, and Alpine ranges, as the Dolomites of Brixen. But

in the uplifting of this deposit, as it was inelastic, the strain split

it in every direction, and down the rifts thus formed danced the

torrents from higher granitic and schistous ranges, forming the gorges

of the Tarn, the Ardêche, the Herault, the Gaves, and the Timée, in

France.

It has been a puzzle to decide which appeared first, the egg out of

which the fowl was hatched, or the hen which laid the egg; and it is an

equal puzzle to the anthropologist to say whether man was first brought

into existence as a babe or in maturity. In both cases he would be

helpless. The babe would need its mother, and the man be paralysed into

incapacity through lack of experience. But without stopping to debate

this question, we may conclude that naked, shivering and homeless

humanity would have to be pupil to the beasts to learn where to shelter

his head. Where did man first appear? Where was the Garden of Eden?

Indisputably on the chalk. There he found all his first demands

supplied. The walls of cretaceous rock furnished him with shelter under

its ledges of overhanging beds, flints out of which to fashion his

tools, and nodules of pyrites wherewith to kindle a fire. Providence

through aeons had built up the chalk to be man's first home.

Incontestably, the great centres of population in the primeval ages

were the chalklands, and next to them those of limestone. The chalk

first, for it furnished man with flints, and the limestone next when he

had learned to barter.

He could have lived nowhere else, till, after the lapse of ages, he had

developed invention and adaptability. Besant and Rice, in "Ready-money

Mortiboy," speak of Divine Discontent as the motive power impelling man

to progress. Not till the chalk and the limestone shelters were

stocked, and could hold no more, would men be driven to invent for

themselves other dwellings. The first men being sent into the world

without a natural coat of fur or feathers, would settle into caves or

under overhanging roofs of rock, and with flint picked out of it,

chipped and pointed, secure the flesh of the beast for food and its

hide for clothing. Having accomplished this, man would sit down

complacently for long ages. Indeed, there are certain branches of the

human family that have progressed no further and display no ambition to

advance.

Only when the districts of chalk and limestone were overstocked would

the overflow be constrained to look elsewhere for shelter. Then some

daring innovators, driven from the favoured land, would construct

habitations by grubbing into the soil, and covering them with a roof of

turf. The ancient Germans, according to Tacitus, lived in underground

cabins, heaped over with dung to keep them warm during the long winter.

With the invention of the earthenware stove, the German Bauer has been

enabled to rise above the surface; but he cherishes the manure round

his house, so to speak, about his feet, as affectionately as when it

warmed his head.

For a long time it was supposed that our British ancestors lived in pit

dwellings, and whole clusters of them were recorded and mapped on the

Yorkshire Wolds, and a British metropolis of them, Caer Penselcoit, was

reported in Somersetshire. Habitations sunk deep in the rock, with only

a roof above ground. But the spade has cracked these archæological

theories like filberts, and has proved that the pits in the wolds were

sunk after iron ore, or those in Somerset were burrowings for the

extraction of chert. [Footnote: Atkinson, "Forty Years in a Moorland

Parish." Lond. 1891, p. 161, _et seq._ Some pits are, however, not

so dubious. At Hurstbourne, in Hants, pit habitations have been

explored; others, in Kent and Oxfordshire, undoubtedly once dwelt in.

In one of the Kentish pits 900 flakes and cores of flint were found.

The Chysoyster huts in Cornwall and the "Picts houses" in Scotland were

built up of stones, underground.] But the original paleolithic man did

not get beyond the cavern or the rock-shelter. This latter was a

retreat beneath an overhanging stratum of hard rock, screened against

the weather by a curtain of skins. And why should he wish to change so

long as these were available? We, from our advanced position, sitting

in padded arm-chairs, before a coal fire, can see that there was room

for improvement; but he could not. The rock-dwelling was commodious,

dry, warm in winter and cool in summer, and it cost him no trouble to

fashion it, or keep it in repair. He had not the prophetic eye to look

forward to the arm-chair and the coal fire. Indeed, at all periods,

down to the present day, those who desire to lead the simple life, and

those who have been reared in these nature-formed dwelling-places, feel

no ambition to occupy stone-built houses. In North Devon the cottages

are reared of cob, kneaded clay, and thatched. A squire on his estate

pulled down those he possessed and built in their place brick houses

with slated roofs. The cottagers bitterly resented the change, their

old mud-hovels were so much warmer. And in like manner the primeval man

would not exchange his _abris_ for a structural dwelling unless

constrained so to do.

The ancients knew that the first homes of mankind were grottoes. They

wrote of Troglodytes in Africa and of cave-dwellers in Liguria. In

Arabia Petræa, a highly civilized people converted their simple rock-

dwellings into sumptuous palaces.

I might fill pages with quotations to the purpose from the classic

authors, but the reader would skip them all. It is not my intention to

give a detailed account of the prehistoric cave-dwellers. They have

been written about repeatedly. In 1882, Dr. Buckland published the

results of his exploration of the Kirkdale Cave in Yorkshire in

_Reliquiæ Diluvianæ_, and sought to establish that the remains

there found pertained to the men who were swept away by Noah's flood.

The publication of Sir Charles Lyall's "The Geological Evidences of the

Antiquity of Man," in 1863, was a shock to all such as clung to the

traditional view that these deposits were due to a cosmic deluge, and

that man was created 4004 B.C.

At first the announcements proving the antiquity of man were received

with orthodox incredulity, because, although the strata, in which the

remains were found, are the most modern of all earth's formations,

still the testimony so completely contravened traditional beliefs, that

the most conclusive evidence was required for its proof. Such evidence

has been found, and is so strong, and so cumulative in character as to

be now generally accepted as conclusive.

Evidence substantiating the thesis of Lyall had been accumulating, and

the researches of Lartet and Christy in the Vézère valley, published in

1865-75, as _Reliquiæ Aquitanicæ_, conclusively proved that man in

Perigord had been a naked savage, contemporary with the mammoth, the

reindeer and the cave-bear, that he had not learned to domesticate

animals, to sow fields, to make pots, and that he was entirely ignorant

of the use of the metals.

Since then, in the valley of the Vézère, Les Eyzies in the Department

of Dordogne, has become a classic spot. I have already described it in

another work, [Footnote: "The Deserts of Southern France." Lond.,

Methuen, 1894.] but I must here say a few more words concerning it. On

reaching the valley of the Vézère by the train from Perigueux, one is

swung down from the plateau into a trough between steep scarps of

chalk-rock that rise from 150 to 300 feet above the placid river. These

scarps have been ploughed by the weather in long horizontal furrows, so

that they lean over as though desirous of contemplating their dirty

faces in the limpid water. Out of their clefts spring evergreen oaks,

juniper, box and sloe-bushes. Moss and lichen stain the white walls

that are streaked by black tricklings from above, and are accordingly

not beautiful--their faces are like that of a pale, dirty, and weeping

child with a cold in its head, who does not use a pocket-handkerchief.

Jackdaws haunt the upper ledges and smaller caves that gape on all

sides chattering like boys escaped from school, and anon a raven starts

forth and hoarsely calls for silence. At the foot of the stooping

crags, bowing to each other across the stream, lie masses that have

broken from above, and atop and behind these is to be seen a string of

cottages built into the rock, taking advantage of the overarching

stratum of hard chalk; and cutting into it are russet, tiled roofs,

where the cottagers have sought to expand beyond the natural shelter:

they are in an intermediate position. Just as I have seen a caddis-worm

emancipating itself from its cage, half in as a worm, half out as a

fly.

Nature would seem to have specially favoured this little nook of

France, which must have been the Eden of primeval man on Gallic soil.

There he found ready-made habitations, a river abounding in fish, a

forest teeming with game; constrained periodically to descend from the

waterless plateaux, at such points as favoured a descent, to slake

their thirst at the stream, and there was the nude hunter lurking in

the scrub or behind a stone, with bow or spear awaiting his prey--his

dinner and his jacket.

What beasts did he slay? The wild horse, with huge head, was driven by

him over the edge of the precipice, and when it fell with broken limbs

or spine, was cut up with flint knives and greedily devoured. The

reindeer was also hunted, and the cumbersome mammoth enabled a whole

tribe to gorge itself.

The grottoes perforating the cliff, like bubbles in Gruyère cheese,

have been occupied consecutively to the present day. Opposite to Les

Eyzies, hanging like a net or skein of black thread to the face of the

precipice, is a hotel, part gallery, part cave--l'Auberge du Paradis;

and a notice in large capitals invites the visitor to a "Course aux

Canards."

When I was last there, reaching the tavern by a ladder erected in a

grotto, I learned that an American couple on their honeymoon had

recently slept in the guest-chamber scooped out of the living rock. The

kitchen itself is a cavern, and in it are shelves, staged against the

rock, offering Chartreuse, green and yellow, Benedictine, and Crème de

Menthe. The proprietor also possesses a gramophone, and its strident

notes we may well suppose imitate the tones of the first inhabitants of

this den. Of the Roc de Tayac, in and against which this paradisaical

hotel is plastered, I shall have more to say in another chapter.

The first men who settled in this favoured valley under shelters open

to the blaze of the sun, in a soft and pleasant climate, where the air

when not in proximity to men, is scented with mint, marjoram and

juniper, where with little trouble a salmon might be harpooned, must

have multiplied enormously--for every overhanging rock, every cavern,

even every fallen block of stone, has been utilised as a habitation.

Where a block has fallen, the prehistoric men scratched the earth away

from beneath it, and couched in the trench. The ground by the river

when turned up is black with the charcoal from their fires. A very

little research will reward the visitor with a pocketful of flint

knives and scrapers. And this is what is found not only on the main

artery, but on all the lateral veins of water--wherever the cretaceous

rocks project and invite to take shelter under them. Since the

researches of Lartet and Christy, it has been known as an established

fact that these savages were indued with rare artistic skill. Their

delineations with a flint point on ivory and bone, of the mammoth,

reindeer, and horse, are so masterly that these men stand forth as the

spiritual ancestors of Landseer and Rosa Bonheur. And what is also

remarkable is that the race which succeeded, that which discovered the

use of metal, was devoid of the artistic sense, and their attempts at

delineation are like the scribbling of an infant.

Of late years fresh discoveries have been made, revealing the fact that

the Paleolithic men were able to paint as well as to engrave. In Les

Combarelles and at Font-de-Gaume, far in the depths, where no light

reaches, the walls have been found turned into a veritable picture-

gallery. In the latter are twenty-four paintings; in the former forty-

two.

Doctor Capitan and the Abbé Breuil were the first to discover the

paintings in Les Combarelles. In an account read before the Academy of

Sciences, they say: "Most frequently, the animals whose contours are

indicated by a black outline, have all the surface thus circumscribed,

entirely covered with red ochre. In some cases certain parts, such as

the head of the urochs, seems to have been painted over with black and

red together, so as to produce a brown tint. In other cases the head of

the beast is black, and the rest of the body brown. This is veritable

fresco painting, and the colour was usually applied after the outline

had been graven in the stone. At other times some shading is added by

hatching supplied after the outline had been drawn. Finally, the

contours are occasionally thrown into prominence by scraping away the

surface of the rock around, so as to give to the figures the appearance

of being in low relief."

These wall paintings are by no means unique. They have been found as

well at Pair-sur-Pair in Gironde, and in the grotto of Altamira at

Santillana del Mar, in the north of Spain.

Still more recently an additional revelation as to the artistic skill

of primeval man has been made; in a cave hitherto unexplored has been

discovered actual sculpture with rounded forms, of extinct beasts.

These discoveries appeared incredible, first, because it was not

considered possible that paintings of such a vastly remote antiquity

could remain fresh and distinguishable, and secondly, because it was

not thought that paintings and sculpture could be executed in the

depths of a rayless cavern, and artificial light have left no traces in

a deposit of soot on the roof.

But it must be remembered that these subterranean passages have been

sealed up from time immemorial, and subjected to no invasion by man or

beast, or to any change of air or temperature. And secondly, that the

artists obtained light from melted fat in stone bowls on the floor, in

which was a wick of pith; and such lamps would hardly discolour ceiling

or walls. Of the genuineness of these paintings and sculptures there

can be no question, from the fact that some are partly glazed over and

some half obliterated by stalagmitic deposits.

Another discovery made in the Mas d'Azil in Arriege, is of painted

pebbles and fan-shells that had served as paint-pots. [Footnote: Piette

(E.), _Les Galets colorrés du Mas d'Azil._ Paris, 1896.] The

pebbles had been decorated with spots, stripes, zig-zags, crosses, and

various rude figures; and these were associated with paleolithic tools.

In the chalk of Champagne, where there are no cliffs, whole villages of

underground habitations have been discovered, but none of these go back

to the earliest age of all; they belong to various epochs; but the

first to excavate them was the Neolithic man, he who raised the rude

stone monuments elsewhere. He had learned to domesticate the ox and the

sheep, had made of the dog the friend of man. His wife span and he

delved; he dug the clay, and she formed it with her fingers into

vessels, on which to this day her finger-prints may be found.

These caves are hollowed out in a thick bed of cretaceous rock. The

habitations are divided into two unequal parts by a wall cut in the

living chalk. To penetrate into the innermost portion of the cave, one

has to descend by steps cut in the stone, and these steps bear

indications of long usage. The entrance is hewn out of a massive screen

of rock, left for the purpose, and on each side of the doorway the

edges show the rebate which served to receive a wooden door-frame. Two

small holes on the right and left were used for fixing bars across to

hold the door fast. A good many of these caves are provided with a

ventilating shaft, and some skilful contrivances were had recourse to

for keeping out water. Inside are shelves, recesses cut in the chalk,

for lamps, and to serve as cupboards. But probably these are due to

later occupants. The Baron de Baye, who explored these caves, picked up

worked flints, showing that their primitive occupants had been men of

the prehistoric age, and other caves associated with them that were

sepulchral were indisputably of the Neolithic age. [Footnote: De Baye

(J.), _L'Archéologie préhistorique._ Paris, 1888.]

Mankind progresses not smoothly, as by a sliding carpet ascent, but by

rugged steps broken by gaps. He halts long on one stage before taking

the next. Often he remains stationary, unable to form resolution to

step forward; sometimes even has turned round and retrograded.

The stream of civilisation flows on like a river, it is rapid in mid-

current, slow at the sides, and has its backwaters. At best,

civilisation advances by spirals. The native of New Guinea still

employs stone tools; whilst an Englishman can get a nest of matches for

twopence, an Indian laboriously kindles a fire with a couple of sticks.

The prehistoric hunter of Solutré devoured the horse. In the time of

Horace so did the Concanni of Spain. In the reign of Hakon, Athelstan's

foster son, horseflesh formed the sacrificial meal of the Norseman. At

the present day, as Mr. Lloyd George assures us, the haggard, ill-paid

German mechanic breaks his long fast on black bread with rare meals of

horseflesh.

At La Laugerie Basse, on the right bank of the Vézère, is a vast

accumulation of fallen rocks, encumbering the ground for at least

thirty-five feet in height under the overhanging cornice. The fallen

matter consists of the disintegration of the projecting lip. Against

the cliff, under the shelter of the rock, as already said, are cottages

with lean-to roofs, internally with the back and with at least half the

ceiling composed of the rock. In one of these Lartet and Christy began

to sink a pit, beside the owner's bed, and the work was carried on to

conclusion by the late Dr. Massenat. The well was driven down through

successive stages of Man; deposits from the sous dropped and trampled

into the earth floor by the children of the cottagers till the virgin

soil was reached; and there, lying on his side, with his hands to his

head for protection, and with a block of fallen rock crushing his

thigh, lay the first prehistoric occupant of this shelter.

On the Causse de Larzac is Navacelles, in Gard; you walk over the arid

plain with nothing in sight; and all at once are brought to a

standstill. You find yourself at the edge of a crater 965 feet deep,

the sides in most places precipitous, and the bottom is reached only by

a zig-zag path. In the face of one of the cliffs is the grotto of

Blandas, that has been occupied since remote ages. A methodical

exploration has revealed a spearhead of silex, a bronze axe, bone

bracelets, a coin of the Hundred Years' War, and lastly a little pin-

cushion of cloth in the shape of a heart, ornamented with metal

crosses, the relic of some refugee in the Reign of Terror, hiding to

escape the guillotine.

At Conduché, where the Célé slides into the Lot, high up in the yellow

and grey limestone precipice is a cave, now accessible only by a

ladder. Hither ascended a _cantonnier_ when the new road was made

up the valley, and here he found chipped flints of primeval man, a

polished celt, a scrap of Samian ware, and in a niche at the side

sealed up with stalactite, a tiny earthenware pitcher 2-1/2 inches

high, a leaden spindle-whorl, some shells, and a toy sheep-bell. Here a

little shepherdess during the stormy times, when the Routiers ravaged

the country, had her refuge while she watched her flock of goats, and

here made her doll's house.

The stalactite cavern of Han in the Ardennes is visited yearly by

crowds. You may see highly coloured illustrations of its interior

illumined by Bengal lights in all the Belgian and many of the French

railway stations. What is now a peepshow was in past ages a habitation

and a home. In it the soil in successive layers has revealed objects

belonging to successive periods in the history of mankind. Its floor

has been in fact a Book of the Revelation of the Past, whose seals have

been opened, and it has disclosed page by page the history of humanity,

from the present, read backwards to the beginning.

At the bottom of all the deposits were discovered the remains of the

very earliest inhabitants, with their hearths about which they sat in

nudity and split bones to extract the marrow, trimmed flints, worked

horn, necklaces of pierced wolf and bears' teeth; then potsherds formed

by hand long before the invention of the wheel; higher up were the arms

and utensils of the bronze age, and the weights of nets. Above these

came the remains of the iron age and wheel-turned crocks. A still

higher stratum surrendered a weight of a scale stamped with an effigy

of the crusading king, S. Louis (1226-1270), and finally francs bearing

the profile of a king, the reverse in every moral characteristic of

Louis the Saint--that of Leopold of Congo notoriety.