Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe by Sabine Baring Gould

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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.

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