Cliff Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe Part 2

A very singular settlement is that of Ezy in the valley of the Eure, at the extreme limit of the department of that name. About a kilometre from the village, along the side of the railway, are numerous subterranean habitations in three storeys, with platforms before them which are horizontal. These were the dwellings of the owners of the vines which at one time covered the hill overhead. But these vineyards failed, and the dwellings were abandoned. However, after their abandonment, it was customary at times for the villagers to resort to them for drinking and dancing bouts. This tradition continues still in force, and on Easter Tuesday these cave dwellings are visited, and there is merrymaking in them. Between the caves at one time some little taverns had been erected, but these also fell into ruin some forty or fifty years ago.

Since then a range of these caverns has become the refuge of a special population of social and moral outcasts. There they live in the utmost misery. The population consists of about eighty persons, male and female and children.

The history of the adults will hardly bear looking into. None of these people have any fixed occupation, and it is difficult to discover how they subsist. In fact, the life of every one of them is a problem. One might have supposed that they maintained a precarious existence by thieving or by begging, as they are far below the ordinary tramp; for with the exception of perhaps two or three of them, these cave-dwellers possess absolutely nothing, and know no trade whatever. They sleep on dry leaves kept together by four pieces of wood, and their sole covering consists of sc.r.a.ps of packing cloth. Sometimes they have not even the framework for their beds, which they manufacture for the most part out of old broken chairs discarded from the churches. A visitor says: "In one of the caverns I entered there was but one of these squalid and rude beds to accommodate five persons, of whom one was a girl of seventeen, and two were boys of fourteen and fifteen. Their kitchen battery consists exclusively of old metal cases of preserved fruit or meats that they have picked up from the ashpits. The majority, but by no means all, have got hold, somehow, of some old stoves or the sc.r.a.ps of a stove that they have put together as best they could. They have a well in common at the bottom of the hill, whence they draw water in such utensils as they possess, and which they let down into the water on a wooden crook. Every one has his crook as his own property, and preserves it near him in the cavern. The majority of these underground people have no clothes to speak of. Girls of fifteen and big boys go about absolutely without any linen. The rest--perhaps three or four--have only a few linen rags upon them. In the stifling atmosphere of these cave-dwellings it is by no means rare to see big children almost, if not absolutely, naked. I saw a great girl with a wild shock of uncombed hair, wearing nothing but a very scanty shift.

"These cave-dwellers live with utter improvidence, although deprived of sufficient food. Three or four couples there have some four or five children to each.

"These families have for the most part formed in the cave-dwellings. A young mother whom I saw there with four children, the only one dressed with an approach to decency, when interrogated by me told me that she had been brought there by her mother at the age of eight. That was twenty-four years ago. She was fair, with tawny hair, and of the Normandy type. She had been born in a village of the neighbourhood, and her mother took refuge in the caverns, apparently in consequence of the loss of her husband.

"I heard of an individual who had been on the parish on account of his incurable laziness, till the mayor losing all patience with him, had him transported to these cave-dwellings and left there. There he settled down, picked up a wife, and had a family.

"These people live quite outside the law, and are quit of all taxes and obligations. As to their marriages they are preceded and followed by no formalities. No attempt is made on the part of the authorities to get the children to school. One gentleman resident in the neighbourhood, a M. Frederic Pa.s.sy, did take pains to ameliorate their condition. He collected the children and laboured to infuse into their hearts and heads some sort of moral principle. But his efforts were ineffectual, and left not a trace behind. They recollect him and his son well enough, but confuse the one with the other. And two of those who were under instruction for a while, when I questioned them about it, allowed that they had submitted to be bored by them for the sake of profiting by their charity.

"I interrogated an old but still robust woman, who had lived in the caverns for three years. She had been consigned to them by her own children, who had sought by this means to rid themselves of the responsibility of maintaining her.

"The elements of this population belong accordingly to all sorts. I noticed only one woman of an olive tint and with very black hair, who may have come from a distance. But I was told she was a recent accession to the colony, and I might be sure of this, as her clothing was still fairly sound and clean. As she is still young and can work, her case is curious; one wonders what can have induced her to go there.

"I saw there also a couple without children; the man had the slouch and hang-dog look of an habitual criminal.

"I may give an instance which will show the degradation to which this population has fallen. An old beggar I visited, who has lived in a cavern belonging to his brother for forty-seven years, and who has had a wife, allowed a billiard ball to be rammed into his mouth for two sous (a penny) by some young fellows who were making sport of him. He was nearly killed by it, for they had the greatest difficulty in extracting the billiard ball." [Footnote: Zaborowski, "Aux Caves d'Ezy," in _Revue Monsuelle de l'ecole d'Anthropologie_, Paris, 1897, i. p. 27, _et seq_.]

At Duclair also, on the Seine, are rock dwellings precisely like those on the Loire, and still inhabited.

Along the banks of the Loire from Tours to Saumur are numerous cave habitations still in occupation. Bell, in his "Wayside Pictures," says of those at Saumur: "Close to the town are residences, literally sculptured in the face of the naked rock. They are cut in the stone, which is the tufa, or soft gravel stone, and easily admits of any workmanship demanded by taste or necessity. There is no little care displayed in the formation of these strange habitations, some of which have sc.r.a.ps of gardens or miniature terraces before them; hanging from the doorways are green creeping things, with other graceful adjuncts, which help to give a touch of beauty to their aspect. In some cases, where the shelving of the rock will admit of it, there are chimneys, in nearly all windows; and it not unfrequently happens, especially higher up the road near Tours, where art has condescended to embellish the facades still more elaborately, that these house-caves present an appearance of elegance which is almost impossible to reconcile with the absolute penury of their inhabitants. The interiors, too, although generally speaking naked enough, are sometimes tolerably well furnished, having an air of comfort in them which, certainly, no one could dream of discovering in such places.

"These habitations are, of course, held only by the poor and outcast, yet, in spite of circ.u.mstances, they live merrily from hand to mouth how they can, and by means, perhaps, not always of the most legitimate description. I have a strong suspicion that the denizens of these rocks are not a whit better than they should be; that their intimate neighbourhood is not the safest promenade after dark: and that, being regarded and treated as Pariahs, they are born and baptized in the resentments which are contingent upon such a condition of existence.

You might as well attempt to chase an eagle to his eyrie among the clouds, as to make your way to some of these perilous chambers, which are cut in the blank face of the rock, and can be reached only by a sinuous track which requires the fibres of a goat to clamber. There are often long lines of these sculptured houses piled in successive tiers above each other; sometimes with a view to architectural regularity, but in almost all cases they are equally hazardous to the unpractised foot of a stranger.

"Stroll down the s.p.a.cious quay of Saumur in the dusk of the evening, when the flickering tapers of the temperate town are going out one by one. Roars of merriment greet you as you approach the cavernous city of the suburb. There the entertainments of the inhabitants are only about to begin. You see moving lights in the distance twinkling along the grey surface of the rock, and flitting amongst the trees that lie between its base and the margin of the river. Some baccha.n.a.lian orgie is going forward." [Footnote: Bell (R.), "Wayside Pictures," Lond.

1850, pp. 292-3.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: CAVE DWELLERS AT DUCLAIR. These are typical of countless others on the Seine, the Loir, the Loire, and its tributaries, as also on the Dronne and Dordogne.]

There was a curious statement made in a work by E. Bosc and L. Bonnemere in 1882, [Footnote: _Hist. des Gaulois sous Vercingetorix_. Paris, 1882.] reproduced by M. Louis Bousrez in 1894, [Footnote: _Les monu- ments Megalithiques de la Touraine_. Tours, 1894.] which, if true, would show that a lingering paganism is to be found among these people.

It is to this effect: "What is unknown to most is that at the present day there exist adepts of the worship (of the Celts) as practised before the Roman invasion, with the sole exception of human sacrifices, which they have been forcibly obliged to renounce. They are to be found on the two banks of the Loire, on the confines of the departments of Allier and Saone-et-Loire, where they are still tolerably numerous, especially in the latter department. They are designated in the country as _Les Blancs_, because that in their ceremonies they cover their heads with a white hood, and their priests are vested like the Druids in a long robe of the same colour.

"They surround their proceedings with profound mystery; their gatherings take place at night in the heart of large forests, about an old oak, and as they are dispersed through the country over a great extent of land, they have to start for the a.s.sembly from different points at close of day so as to be able to reach home again before daybreak. They have four meetings in the year, but one, the most solemn, is held near the town of La Clayette under the presidence of the high priest. Those who come from the greatest distance do not reach their homes till the second night, and their absence during the intervening day alone reveals to the neighbours that they have attended an a.s.sembly of the Whites. Their priests are known, and are vulgarly designated as the bishops or archbishops of the Whites; they are actually druids and archdruids.... We have been able to verify these interesting facts brought to our notice by M. Parent, and our personal investigations into the matter enable us to affirm the exact.i.tude of what has been advanced."

If there be any truth in this strange story, we are much more disposed to consider the Whites as relics of a Manichaean or Albigensian sect than as a survival of Druidism. More probable still is it that they are or were a political confederation. But I suspect that the account is due to a heated imagination.

At Bourre (Loir et Cher) are extensive quarries in the face of the hill. Here the chalk is hard and of beautiful texture. The stone has been derived hence for the erection of several of the castles in the Touraine, as also for buildings in the towns of Tours, Blois, Montrichard, &c. Most of the habitations of the villagers, who are nearly all quarrymen, are excavated in the rock, occupy old disused workings, or have been specially dug out to suit the convenience and dispositions of the occupants. In some of these old underground quarries, that are not open to the light of day, dances and revelries take place, when they are brilliantly illuminated. At Sainte Maure, on the road from Tours to Chatelherault, in a deep cleft of the _Cande_ that is covered with the _falun_, an extensive deposit of marine and freshwater sh.e.l.ls, marking the beach of an old estuary of the sea, is the village of Courtineau, wholly made up of Troglodyte habita- tions, and with its chapel also excavated in the rock.

[ILl.u.s.tRATION: SAULIAC. A village in the valley of the Cele Lot, built partly into the rocks, with chambers excavated out of the cliff.]

At Villaines (Indre et Loire) the cliffs are pierced with caves that are inhabited by basket-makers, and the watercourses below are planted with willow, or else have cut osiers lying in them soaking to preserve their suppleness. In the caves, on the roads, in every house, one sees little else but baskets in process of making or cut osiers lying handy for use. The women split and peel the green rods, men and children with nimble fingers plait the white canes. All the basket-makers are themselves plaited into one co-operative a.s.sociation. From time immemorial Villaines had made baskets, the osier of the valley being of excellent quality. But the products could not be disposed of satisfactorily; they were bought by regraders, who beat down the prices of the wares, and the workmen had no means of seeking out the markets, in which to sell with full advantage to themselves. In 1845 an old cure, whose name is remembered with affection, the Abbe Chicogne, conceived the idea of creating a co-operative society; and aided by the Count de Villemois, he grouped the workers, and drew up the statutes of the a.s.sociation, that remain in force to the present day. All the products are brought together into a common store, and sold for the benefit of the a.s.sociates. No member is permitted to dispose of a single piece of his workmanship to a purchaser; he may not sell in gross any more than he may in detail. The cave-houses are comfortably and neatly furnished, and their appearance and that of their inhabitants proclaims well-being, content and cheerfulness.

On the Beune, a tributary of the Vezere, is the hamlet of Grioteaux, planted on a terrace in a cave, the rock overhangs the houses. Above the cl.u.s.ter, inaccessible without a ladder, in the face of the cliff, is a chamber hewn out of the rock, and joist holes proclaiming that at one time a wooden gallery preceded it. This cavern, that is wholly artificial, served in times of trouble as a place in which the community concealed their valuables.

The river Cele that flows into the Lot pa.s.ses under n.o.ble cliffs of fawn and orange-tinted limestone, and the road here is called Le Defile des Anglais, as the whole valley during the Hundred Years' War was in the possession of the Companies that pretended to fight for the Leopards. And it was down this defile that the cutthroats rode on their plundering expeditions. In this valley is the village of Sauliac, in an amphitheatre of rocks, where road and river describe a semicircle. The cliff runs up to a height of 300 feet. Houses are perched on every available ledge, grappling the rock, where not simply consisting of faced caverns. In the midst of this cirque stands the castle, buried in stately oaks. It was not built till 1460, when the long agony of the war was over, and nothing remained of the English save their empty nests in the rock, and their hated name.

A modern chapel, very white and not congruous with its surroundings, is perched above the road on a terrace under Le Roc Perce, so named from a natural cavern, very round, drilled through it, as though wrought by a giant's boring tool.

At Cuzorn, on the line from Perigueux to Agen, are very fine rocks in a meander of the Lemance, starting out of woods, and these contain caverns that have been, and some still are, inhabited. In this region are many quarries, not open to the sky, but forming halls and galleries under the hill, and some of these have been taken possession of and turned into habitations.

At Brantome on the Dronne a good many of the houses are against the rock, the caves built up in front with the usual window and door to each. More have their workshops in grottoes, in them blacksmiths have their forges, carpenters their planing benches, tinkers, tailors, cobblers carry on their business in comparative obscurity. The superior stratum of rock is of so hard and tenacious a quality that it holds together with very few piers to support it. When a citizen wants to enlarge his premises, he merely digs deeper into the hill; he has no ground-rent to pay. Some caves open a hundred feet wide without a support.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GRIOTEAUX. A hamlet under overhanging rocks and with chambers excavated in the rock. Above is a cave used as a place of refuge, and notches that indicate where was a gallery reached by a rope or ladder.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: LA ROCHEBRUNE. The upper chamber with eight holes in the floor, six for stabbing at those who had invaded the lower chamber, and two providing the means of escape.]

Any one motoring or going by rail from Angouleme to Perigueux should halt half-way at La Roche Beaucourt, where the rock l'Argentine contains a nest of cave-dwellings, with silos in the floors and cupboards in the walls.

That the savage is not extinct in these out-of-the-way parts may be judged from this--that at Hautefaye near by, the peasants in 1870 laid hold of M. de Moneis, who objected to the prosecution of the war with the Prussians after Sedan, cruelly maltreated him, and threw him alive on a bonfire in which he expired among the flames.

The whole south-east angle of the Isle of Sicily is full of underground cities, of which that of the Val d'Ispica is the most famous. These excavations are vulgarly called Ddieri, but they are not in most cases tombs, but dwelling-places for the living, as is shown by the handmills for oil and corn that are found in them.

The Val d'Ispica is a narrow valley situated between Modica and Spaicaforno; and throughout its entire length of about eight miles, the rock walls are pierced on both sides with countless grottoes, all artificial, and showing the marks of tools on their walls. They are scooped in the calcareous rock. Some consist of as many as ten or twelve chambers in succession, and are seldom more than 20 feet deep by 6 feet high, and they are of the same breadth. At the bottom of the valley flows a little stream that supplied the inhabitants with water, and irrigates wild fig-trees and pink-flowered oleanders. On a higher level grow broad-leaved acanthi and wild artichokes, and thick festoons of cactus hang down from the top of the rock and shade the entrances to the grottoes. A portion of the rock wall on the right bank of the stream has fallen, and exposed to sight the internal arrangement of the dwellings. But previous to this, ascent could only have been made by ladders or by notches in the rock for the insertion of toes and fingers, as among the cliff-dwellers in Arizona. There are ranges of these habitations on several stages, and steps cut in the rock allowed communication between them; but above all is a ledge or gallery open to the sky and commanding a magnificent prospect. This could be reached only by a ladder, and probably formed the rendezvous of the women of the Troglodyte town in an evening to enjoy the cool air, and exercise their tongues. It may also have served as the last refuge of the inmates of the caverns, who, after escaping to it could withdraw the ladder.

One dwelling of three storeys, with flights of steps in good preservation, is called the Castle by the peasants. Parthey, a German traveller, who investigated these dwellings, reckoned their number to be over 1500. He saw nowhere any trace of ornament about them. Doors and windows were mere rough holes cut through the limestone. Rings hewn in the stone which are found in the chambers probably served some purpose of domestic economy. Fragments of Samian ware and carved marble have been found in them, but are probably later than the construction of these habitations. Some contain graves, and these also may be later, but actually we know from history nothing about them. Rock tombs may have been utilised as dwellings or abandoned dwellings as tombs. To the present day some of them are still occupied, mainly by shepherds and poor peasants. The range in the Crimea from Cape Kersonese to the Bay of Ratla is formed of layers of limestone alternating with clay and argilaceous schist, a disposition of the strata that tends greatly to accelerate the disintegration of the cliffs. The clay gradually washed out by springs or eaten away by the weather forms great caverns in the sides, and these are liable to fall in when deprived of support. They have, however, been utilised as habitations. The Rock of Inkermann, the ancient Celamita, runs east of the town beyond the marshy valley of the Chernaya; it has been converted into a vast quarry which menaces with destruction the old Troglodyte town that occupied the cliffs. The galleries of this underground town form a rabbit warren in which it is dangerous to penetrate without a guide or a clue. Some of the chambers are large enough to contain five hundred people.

The rocks of Djonfont-kaleharri are also honeycombed, with still inhabited caves; some are completely cavernous, but others have the openings walled up so as to form a screen. Beneath an overhanging rock is a domed church used by this Troglodyte community.

If we cross the Mediterranean to Egypt, we see there whole villages of cave-dwellers. The district between Mansa-Sura and Cyrene is full of grottoes in the very heart of the mountains, into which whole families get by means of ropes, and many are born, live and die in these dens, without ever going out of them.

The volcanic breccia as well as chalk and limestone has been utilised for the habitation of man. There is a very interesting collection of cave-dwellings all artificial, the Balmes du Montbrun, a volcanic crater of the Coiron, near S. Jean le Centenier in the Vivarais. The crater is 300 feet in diameter and 480 feet deep; and man has burrowed into the sides of porous lava or pumice to form a series of habitations, a chapel, and one that is traditionally said to have served as a prison. This rock settlement was occupied till the close of the eighteenth century.

The Grottoes de Boissiere are twelve in number, on the side of the Puy de Chateauneuf, commanding the road from Saint Nectaire to Marols, Puy de Dome. They are excavated in the volcanic tufa, and are all much of the same dimensions; one, however, measures 28 feet by 12 feet, and is 7 feet high. Below the grottoes the slope of the hill is parcelled out into small fields or gardens by means of walls of stones laid one on another without mortar, showing that the inhabitants of these caves lived there permanently and cultivated the ground below their dwellings. [Footnote: There are others, Les Grottes de Rajah, in the same ma.s.s of rock, with near them an isolated rock carved about and supposed to have been an idol.] More curious still are the Grottoes de Jonas on the Couze, also in Puy de Dome, near Cheix. They are in stages one range above another to the height of from 90 to 120 feet. The face of the mountain is precipitous, and is of a porous tufa full of holes.

As many as sixty of these artificial caves remain; but there were at one time many more, that have been destroyed by the fall of the very friable volcanic rock. It is impossible to determine the period at which these caves were excavated; they were probably prehistoric to begin with, but were tenanted during the Middle Ages when--if not later--the tracks leading to them were cut in the tufa and stairs to connect the several stages. Then paths were bordered by walls as a protection, and fragments of the parapet remain. Probably it was during the English occupation of Guienne which extended into Auvergne, that a castle and a chapel were sculptured out of the living rock. At the same time a remarkable spiral staircase was contrived in like manner.

Numerous relics of all periods--flint tools, bronze weapons, statuettes, and coins--have been found among the rubbish thrown out from these dens. [Footnote: G. Tournier, _Les Megalithes et les Grottes des environs de S. Nectaire_. Paris, 1910.]

On the Borne, in Haute Loire, dug out of the volcanic rock are several cave-dwellings. The caves at Conteaux are fourteen in number, the largest is divided into three compartments; each is 45 feet deep and 11 feet wide, but the usual dimension is from 28 to 36 feet. In all, the vault is rather over 6 feet high. An opening in the roof of one gave vent to smoke.

The rock of Ceyssac is curious. Formerly a barrier of volcanic tufa stretched across the valley of the Borne; this barrier had been ejected from the volcano of La Denise. The river, arrested in its onward course, was ponded back and formed a lake that overflowed the dam in two places, leaving between them a fang of harder rock. When the water had spilled for a considerable time over the left-hand lip, and had worn this down to a depth of about 70 feet, it all at once abandoned this mode of outlet and concentrated its efforts on the right-hand portion of the dam where it found the tufa less compact. It eventually sawed its way completely through till it reached its present level, leaving the p.r.o.ng of rock in the middle rising precipitously out of the valley with the river gliding peacefully below it, but attached to the mountain side by the neck it had abandoned. The fang was laid hold of, burrowed into, and converted into a village of Troglodytes. In it are cave-dwellings in five superposed storeys, stables with their mangers, with rings for tying up cattle, a vast hall, that is circular, and chambers with lockers and seats graven out of the sides of the walls.

There is also a subterranean chapel, with the entrance blocked by a wall that contains an early Romanesque doorway. The Polignacs seized on the spike of rock and built on the summit a castle that could be reached only by a flight of steps cut in the face of the rock. By degrees the inhabitants have migrated from their caves to the neck of land connecting the p.r.o.ng with the hill, and have built themselves houses thereon. They have even abandoned their monolithic church and erected in its place an unsightly modern building.

There are other cave-dwellings in the volcanic rocks of the Cevennes and Auvergne, but the above account must suffice.

I will now say something about the Troglodyte dwellings in the sandstone in Correze, in the neighbourhood of Brive, caves that have been inhabited from the time of the man who was contemporary with the mammoth, to this day. Some have, however, been abandoned comparatively recently.

They do not run deep into the rock; usually they face the south or south-west, and are sometimes in a series at the same level; sometimes they form several storeys, which communicated with each other by ladders that pa.s.sed through holes cut in the floor of the upper storey, or else by a narrow cornice, wide enough for one to walk on. Sometimes this cornice has been abraded by the weather, and fallen away; in which case these cave-dwellings can be reached only by a ladder. There are caves in which notches cut in the rock show where beams had been inserted, and struts to maintain them, so as to form a wooden balcony for communication between the chambers, or between the dwellings of neighbours.

The doorways into these habitations are usually cut so as to admit a wooden frame to which a door might be attached; and there are deep holes bored in the rock, very much as in our old churches and towers, for the cross-piece of timber that effectually fastened the door.

The grottoes are cut square, the ceilings are always sensibly horizontal, and the walls always vertical. But where a natural hollow has been artificially deepened, there the opening is usually irregular.

Moreover, in such case, the gaping mouth of the cave was in part walled up. The traces of the tool employed are everywhere observable, they indicate that the rock was cut by a pick having a triangular point.

Small square holes in the sides, and long horizontal grooves indicate the position of shelves. Square hollows of considerable size served as cupboards, and oblong rectangular recesses, 18 inches above the floor, and from 3 feet 9 inches to 4 feet 6 inches high and a foot deep were benches. Bedplaces were also cut in the rock.

There are also indications of a floor having been carried across in some of the loftier caves, and there are openings in the roofs through which ascent was made to the series of chambers on the upper storey.