Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe | Page 7

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