Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe | Page 4

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,