Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe - Sabine Baring-Gould (books to read to improve english TXT) 📗

within a few days. Years after, the Archbishop of Crete blessed the cavern, and the bones of the victims of Turkish barbarity were collected and buried in the outer hall, which has in its centre a lofty stalagmite reaching to the summit, and the walls on all sides are draped with stalactites.

We must not pass over without a word the treatment of the Arabs in Algeria by the French troops, when General Lamorciere suffocated the unfortunate refugees in the caves whither they had fled, in the same way as Caesar's general had suffocated the Gauls.


CHAPTER IV


CLIFF REFUGES

I have divided Refuges into two classes--those that have been burrowed under the soil, and those that open in the face of a cliff. Occasionally they run one into another, and yet they materially differ. The first have their entrances elaborately concealed, whereas the latter are bare to the face of day, and no concealment is possible or attempted. Those who had recourse to the first trusted in being able, should the entrance be discovered or betrayed, to defend themselves by various devices, whereas those who resorted to the latter relied on their inaccessibility.

Where a cliff stood up precipitous or overhanging, and in its face gaped caverns, those who sought refuge in time of danger naturally looked to them, and contrived means of reaching them, therein to ensconce their goods and secure their persons. They might have to contemplate the devastation of their fields, and their farms burning, from their eyries, but they knew that their persons were safe. There were various ways by which these caves could be reached; one was by cutting notches in the face of the cliff for fingers and toes, so that it could be climbed to from below, but not accessible to an enemy exposed to the thrust of pikes, and to stones being cast down upon him. Or else the notches were cut laterally from an accessible ledge, but if so, then this mode of approach was carefully guarded. A second method was by ladders, but as some of these caves are so high up that no single ladder could reach their mouths, a succession was contrived notched below and above into the rock where ledges either existed naturally or were contrived artificially, so as to enable the climber to step from one ladder to the next. In the event of danger the ladders could be withdrawn. A third method was by a windlass, rope and basket, and this was employed where the ascent by finger and toe notches was peculiarly perilous, for the conveyance of goods or of children and old people. But cattle had also to be saved from the depredators, and in some of the cliff refuges are stables for horses and cowstalls, with mangers and silos; places also where the windlass was fixed and there the sharp edge of the rock has been smoothed to an easy slope to facilitate the landing of the beasts, that were hauled up by bands placed under their bellies. Provision was also made for the baking of bread and the storage of water, this latter in the same way as already described in the account of the contrivances for permanent rock- dwellings. These cliff refuges can have been had recourse to only on emergencies, on account of their inaccessibility.

At Cazelles in the commune of Sireuil (Dordogne) is a cliff 1200 feet long, and about 150 feet high. It has been worn into a deep furrow some twenty or thirty feet from the top, horizontal and running its entire length. The whole cliff overhangs its base. The entire groove has been occupied as a refuge, and there have been excavations in the back of the groove for additional chambers. In front, moreover, there must have been a balcony of wood, sustained by beams and props. In three places the edge of the terrace has been cut through for the convenience of hauling up cattle and farm produce. At the time when this was in use there was a hamlet at the foot of the cliff, as is shown by the furrows cut in the rock into which the tile roofing was let, and notches for the reception of the roof timbers.

No trace of a stair remains; in fact no stair could have been cut in the face of a rock that overhangs as does this. Another very remarkable cliff-refuge is Le Peuch Saint Sour on the Vezere. It is not mentioned in any chronicle as having been a resort of the English in the Hundred Years' War, and we may accordingly conclude that it was a refuge for the inhabitants of the hamlet at its feet.

S. Sorus or Sour was a hermit, born about the year 500; he set off with two companions, Amandus and Cyprian, to find a desert place where he might take up his abode. I will quote from the Latin life. "All at once in their wanderings they arrived at a place in the midst of vast forests, and dens of wild beasts, a place so barren and abrupt, of access so difficult, that surely no one had ever hitherto ventured to reach it either to dwell there, or for pleasure, even to visit it for curiosity. A rock very lofty furnished him above with a shelter that sufficed; out of the flanks of the rock issued a spring and watered the little valley that was on the other side surrounded by the Vezere."

I think that it was in the Peuch S. Sour that the hermit settled, though afterwards through the favour of King Gontram he moved to lands granted him at Terrasson. And now for a story. Here he resolved to live alone, and here he parted with his companions. But before they separated, "Let us have a love feast together," said he. But he had with him only a bit of fat bacon. He divided it into three parts, and gave a share to each of his companions. Now it was Lent, and one of them was scandalized at the idea of eating bacon in Lent, so he put the bit of meat into his bosom, where it was at once transformed into a serpent, which enwrapped him in its coils. Terrified, he screamed to Sour to deliver him, which the hermit did, and the monster was at once resolved into a bit of bacon. "Eat it," said the hermit, "and remember that Charity is above all rules."

The description of the place so well accords with the Peuch that bears his name, that I cannot doubt but that Sour occupied for some years the cave high up in the cliff, and only to be reached by crawling to it sideways, holding on to the rock by fingers and toes. But afterwards it was greatly enlarged to serve as a place of retreat by the peasants of the hamlet below. It consists of three groups of chambers cut in the rock, one reached by a very long, forty-round ladder, when a chamber is entered which has a hole in the roof through which, by another ladder, one can mount to a whole series of chambers communicating one with another. The face of some of these was originally walled up. A second group is now inaccessible. A third is reached by climbing along the face of the cliff, with fingers and toes placed in niches cut in the cleft to receive them.

A recess at the foot of the crag, arched above, contains three perpendicular grooves. This was the beginning of another artificial cave, never completed, begun maybe in 1453 and suddenly abandoned, as the glad tidings rang through the land that the English had abandoned Aquitaine and that the Companies were disbanded.

At the Roc d'Aucor, in the valley of the Vers (Lot), a gaping cave is visible far above where any ladder could reach and inaccessible by climbing from the top of the crag, as that overhangs like a wave about to break. Nevertheless, athwart the opening are, and have been from time immemorial, two stout beams let into the rock horizontally. Dimly visible in the depth of the cavern is some tall white figure, and the peasants declare that it is that of a man--a statue in marble, keeping guard over a golden calf.

In 1894, M. Martel and three friends, taking with them Armand, the trusty help in descending _avens_, pot-holes, and exploring the course of subterranean rivers, resolved on an attempt at the exploration of this mysterious cavern.

The mouth is 90 feet from the ground, and its floor is about 95 feet from the summit of the cliff, [Footnote: Martel (A.), Le Refuge du Roc d'Aucor, Brive, 1895.] which is crowned by the _oppidurn_ of Murcens, the best preserved of all Gaulish strongholds in France, and was held by the English in 1370. The only possible way to obtain access to the interior would be from above, as the plumb-line let down from the summit fell 44 feet wide from the base of the cliff. Accordingly a rope ladder was attached to a tree on the top, and Armand descended furnished with a plumb-line, the end of which was attached to a cord. "Having descended 77 feet, he swung free in the air at the level of the transverse poles. Then he endeavoured to throw the lead-weight beyond one of the poles. He succeeded only after the seventh or eighth attempt, and was well pleased when the weight running over it swung down to our feet, as the position of the poles and the slope of the floor of the fissure did not allow it to rest in the cavern. 'Pull the cord,' shouted Armand. 'What for?' 'You will soon see. Pull'--and speedily the string drew after it one of our stout ropes. 'Now do you understand?' asked Armand. 'I have fastened my rope ladder to the cord that goes over the pole. Four or five of you pull and draw me in towards that pole, and so we shall get the better of the situation. When I have fixed the ladder to the pole you may all mount by the grand stair.'"

By good fortune that beam held firm, and first Armand got into the cave and then the others mounted from below. What made the entrance treacherous was that the floor at the orifice sloped rapidly downwards and outwards.

When within, it was seen that the posts were still solid and firmly planted in notches cut in the rock on both sides. In line with them were two rows of similar notches for the reception of beams extending inwards for about twenty feet, as though at one time there had been rafters to divide the cave into two storeys, but of such rafters none remained. The back of the cave was occupied by a gleaming white stalagmitic column that certainly from below bore some resemblance to a human figure, but the floor of the cavern was so deep in birds' nests, and droppings of bats, leaves and branches, that it was not possible at the time to explore it. This, however, was done by M. Martel in 1905, but nothing of archaeological interest was found. However, he noticed a sort of ascending chimney that extended too far to be illumined to its extremity by the magnesium wire, and he conjectured that it extended to the surface of the rock above, where was the original entrance, now choked with earth and stone.

But an investigation by M. A. Vire has solved the mystery of how access was obtained to this refuge. The beams visible from below are, as already said, two in number. The upper and largest is square, and measures seven by eight inches. The lower is nearly round and is four inches in diameter, and