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Mankind progresses not smoothly, as by a sliding carpet ascent, but by rugged steps broken by gaps. He halts long on one stage before taking the next. Often he remains stationary, unable to form resolution to step forward; sometimes even has turned round and retrograded.

The stream of civilisation flows on like a river, it is rapid in mid- current, slow at the sides, and has its backwaters. At best, civilisation advances by spirals. The native of New Guinea still employs stone tools; whilst an Englishman can get a nest of matches for twopence, an Indian laboriously kindles a fire with a couple of sticks. The prehistoric hunter of Solutr? devoured the horse. In the time of Horace so did the Concanni of Spain. In the reign of Hakon, Athelstan's foster son, horseflesh formed the sacrificial meal of the Norseman. At the present day, as Mr. Lloyd George assures us, the haggard, ill-paid German mechanic breaks his long fast on black bread with rare meals of horseflesh.

At La Laugerie Basse, on the right bank of the V?z?re, is a vast accumulation of fallen rocks, encumbering the ground for at least thirty-five feet in height under the overhanging cornice. The fallen matter consists of the disintegration of the projecting lip. Against the cliff, under the shelter of the rock, as already said, are cottages with lean-to roofs, internally with the back and with at least half the ceiling composed of the rock. In one of these Lartet and Christy began to sink a pit, beside the owner's bed, and the work was carried on to conclusion by the late Dr. Massenat. The well was driven down through successive stages of Man; deposits from the sous dropped and trampled into the earth floor by the children of the cottagers till the virgin soil was reached; and there, lying on his side, with his hands to his head for protection, and with a block of fallen rock crushing his thigh, lay the first prehistoric occupant of this shelter.

On the Causse de Larzac is Navacelles, in Gard; you walk over the arid plain with nothing in sight; and all at once are brought to a standstill. You find yourself at the edge of a crater 965 feet deep, the sides in most places precipitous, and the bottom is reached only by a zig-zag path. In the face of one of the cliffs is the grotto of Blandas, that has been occupied since remote ages. A methodical exploration has revealed a spearhead of silex, a bronze axe, bone bracelets, a coin of the Hundred Years' War, and lastly a little pin- cushion of cloth in the shape of a heart, ornamented with metal crosses, the relic of some refugee in the Reign of Terror, hiding to escape the guillotine.

At the bottom of all the deposits were discovered the remains of the very earliest inhabitants, with their hearths about which they sat in nudity and split bones to extract the marrow, trimmed flints, worked horn, necklaces of pierced wolf and bears' teeth; then potsherds formed by hand long before the invention of the wheel; higher up were the arms and utensils of the bronze age, and the weights of nets. Above these came the remains of the iron age and wheel-turned crocks. A still higher stratum surrendered a weight of a scale stamped with an effigy of the crusading king, S. Louis , and finally francs bearing the profile of a king, the reverse in every moral characteristic of Louis the Saint--that of Leopold of Congo notoriety.

MODERN TROGLODYTES

Herodotus, speaking of the Ligurians, says that they spent the night in the open air, rarely in huts, but that they usually inhabited caverns. Every traveller who goes to the Riviera, the old Ligurian shore, knows, but knows only by a passing glance, the Etang de Berre, that inland sea, blue as a sapphire, waveless, girt about by white hills, and perhaps he wonders that Toulon should have been selected as a naval port, when there was this one, deeper, and excavated by Nature to serve as a harbour. The rocks of S. Chamas that look down on this peaceful sheet of water, rarely traversed by a sail, are riddled with caves, still inhabited, as they were when Herodotus wrote 450 years before the Christian era.

The following account of an underground town in Palestine is from the pen of Consul Wetzstein, and describes one in the Hauran. "I visited old Edrei--the subterranean labyrinthic residence of King Og--on the east side of the Zanite hills. Two sons of the sheikh of the village-- one fourteen and the other sixteen years of age--accompanied me. We took with us a box of matches and two candles. After we had gone down the slope for some time, we came to a dozen rooms which, at present, are used as goat stalls and storerooms for straw. The passage became gradually smaller, until at last we were compelled to lie down flat and creep along. This extremely difficult and uncomfortable progress lasted for about eight minutes, when we were obliged to jump down a steep well, several feet in depth. Here I noticed that the younger of my two attendants had remained behind, being afraid to follow us; but probably it was more from fear of the unknown European than of the dark and winding passages before us.

"We now found ourselves in a broad street, which had dwellings on both sides, whose height and width left nothing to be desired. The temperature was mild, the air free from unpleasant odours, and I felt not the smallest difficulty in breathing. Further along there were several cross-streets, and my guide called my attention to a hole in the ceiling for air, like three others which I afterwards saw, now closed from above. Soon after we came to a market-place, where, for a long distance, on both sides of the pretty broad street, were numerous shops in the walls, exactly in the style of the shops seen in Syrian cities. After a while we turned into a side street, where a great hall, whose roof was supported by four pillars, attracted my attention. The roof, or ceiling, was formed of a single slab of jasper, perfectly smooth and of immense size, in which I was unable to perceive the slightest crack.

"The rooms, for the most part, had no supports. The doors were often made of a single square stone, and here and there I also noticed fallen columns. After we had passed several cross-alleys or streets, and before we had reached the middle of the subterranean city, my attendant's light went out. As he was lighting again by mine, it occurred to me that possibly both our lights might be extinguished, and I asked the boy if he had any matches. 'No,' he replied, 'my brother has them.' 'Could you find your way back if the lights were put out?' 'Impossible,' he replied. For a moment I began to be alarmed at this underworld, and urged an immediate return. Without much difficulty we got back to the marketplace and from hence the youngster knew the way well enough. Thus, after a sojourn of more than an hour and a half in this labyrinth, I again greeted the light of day."

I have quoted this somewhat lengthy account because, as we shall see in the sequel, the subterranean dwellings and above all refuges in Europe, bear to this town of King Og of Bashan a marked resemblance.

Within four hours of Paris by Chartres and Sarg? is the town of Montoire with a clean inn, Le Cheval Rouge, and next station down the Loir is Tr?o. The Loir, male, is the river, not La Loire of the feminine gender. Le Loir is a river that rises in the north-east, traverses the fertile upland plain of Beauce, and falls into and is lost in La Loire at Angers. It is a river rarely visited by English tourists, but it does not deserve to be overlooked. It has cut for itself a furrow in the chalk tufa, and the hospitable cliffs on each side offer a home to any vagrant who cares to scratch for himself a hole in the friable face, wherein to shelter his head.

Tr?o bears a certain resemblance to the city of Og. Originally it was all underground, but in process of time it effervesced, bubbled out of its holes, and is now but half troglodyte. The heights that form the Northern declivity of the valley of the Loir come to an abrupt end here, and have been sawn through by a small stream creating a natural fosse, isolating the hill of Tr?o that is attached to the plateau only on the North. The hill rises steeply from the river to a crest occupied by a Romanesque church recently scoured to the whiteness of flour, and beside it is a mighty tumulus, planted with trees.

Formerly on this same height stood a castle, but this has been so completely broken down that nothing remains of it but a few substructures and its well.

Tr?o was at one time a walled town, and as it was the key to the valley of the Loir, was hotly contested between the English and French during three hundred years, and later, between Catholics and Huguenots. The place was besieged by Mercader, the captain under Richard Coeur-de Lion, who had flayed alive the slayer of his master under the walls of Caylus, although Richard had promised him immunity. Here Mercader met his death, and was buried under a mound that is still shown.

But what makes Tr?o especially interesting is that the whole height is like a sponge, perforated with passages giving access to halls, some of which are circular, and into store-chambers; and most of the houses are wholly or in part underground. The caves that are inhabited are staged one above another, some reached by stairs that are little better than ladders, and the subterranean passages leading from them form a labyrinth within the bowels of the hill, and run in superposed storeys. In one that I entered was an oven, with a well at its side. A little further, in a large hall, a circular hole in the floor unfenced gave access by rope or ladder to a lower range of galleries. Any one exploring by the feeble light of a single candle, without a guide, might be precipitated down this abyss without knowing that there was a gaping opening before him. A long ascending passage, with niches in the sides for lamps, leads to where the fibres of the roots of the trees on the mound above have penetrated and are hanging down. It is said that the gallery led on to the castle, but since this latter has been ruined it has been blocked. In the holes whence flints have dropped spiders harbour, that feed on ghostly moths which flit in the pitch darkness, and when caught between the fingers resolve themselves into a trace of silver dust. But on what did these spectral moths feed? A pallid boy of sixteen who guided me about the town told me that he had been born in a cave; that he slept in one every night, and worked underground all day. His large brown eyes could see objects in the dark where all was of inky blackness to me. It is astonishing with what unconcern mites of children romp and ramble through these corridors, where there is danger not only on account of pitfalls, but also of the roof falling in. Where I went, guided by a child of ten, every now and then I was warned-- "Prenez garde, c'est ?croul?."

The town--it was a town once, but now contains 783 inhabitants only--is partly built at the foot of the bluff, but very few houses are without excavated chambers, store-places or stables. The caf? looks ordinary enough, but enter, and you find yourself in a dungeon. There is but one street--La Grande Rue--and that has space and landscape on one side, and houses built against and into the rock on the other. A notice at the entrance to the street warns that no heavy traffic, not much above the weight of a perambulator, is permitted to pass along it, for the roadway runs over the tops of houses. A waggon might crash through into the chamber of a bedridden beldame, and a motor be precipitated downwards to salt the soup of a wife stirring it for her husband's supper. At Tr?o chimneys bristle everywhere, making the hill resemble a pin-cushion or a piece of larded veal. There are in the depth of the hill wells, and to these mothers fearlessly despatch their children to fill a pitcher, as often as not without a light.

Many of the cave-dwellings have but a ledge a few feet wide, and perhaps only a dozen or twenty feet long before their doors, and at the extreme edge one may see the children standing, unaffected with giddiness, like a row of swallows, contemplating the visitor. I cannot say how it may be with the lower houses, but those high up are pronouncedly odoriferous; for the inhabitants have no means of disposing of their garbage save by exposing it on their little shelves to be dried up by the sun, or washed down by the rain over the windows and doors of their neighbours beneath.

There is another Troglodyte town, also formerly walled, Les Roches, above Montoire. It is occupied by six hundred souls, and most of the houses are dug out of the rock. There is hardly space for the road to run between the Loir and the crags, and the church has to curl itself like a dog going to sleep to fit the area allowed it. This rock forms perpendicular bluffs of chalk tufa, and masses of fallen stone lie at their feet. Some rocks overhang, and the whole of this cliff and the fallen blocks have been drilled with openings and converted into habitations for man and for beast. Doors and windows have been cut in the stone, which has been hollowed out as maggots clear out the kernel of a nut. Rooms, kitchens, cellars, stables have been thus contrived. The chimneys run up the rocks, and through them; and on the plateau above open as wells, but are surrounded by a breastwork of bricks to protect them against the rain, which might form a rill that would decant playfully down the opening in a waterfall. In winter, when all hearths are lighted, the smoke issuing from all these little structures has the effect of a series of steaming saucepans.

A little way up the river outside the walls is the Ch?teau de Boydan, half scooped out of the cliff, with pretty sixteenth century mullioned and transomed windows. At right angles to the rock a wing was thrown out to contain the state apartments with their fireplaces and chimneys. But unfortunately it was tacking on of new cloth to the old garment, and the face of the rock slid down carrying with it the side walls and windows, and has left the gable containing the handsome stone chimney- pieces and the chimneys as an isolated fragment. Just beyond, excavated in the bluff, is the chapel of S. Gervais, consisting of two portions, an outer and an inner chamber. But the cliff face had been cut for the windows too thin, and the whole slid away at the same time probably as the disaster happened to the castle, and has exposed the interior of this monolithic church. There are remains of frescoes on the wall painted with considerable spirit; a king on horseback blowing a horn, and behind him a huntsman armed with a boar-spear. Benches cut in the rock surround the sanctuary. Externally a niche contains a rude image of the saint.

Still nearer to Montoire, on the left bank of the Loir is Lavardin; high up on the side of the hill, completely screened by a dense wood, is a hamlet of Troglodytes. The principal excavation served originally as a hermitage, and is called La Grotte des Vierges. There is a range of rock-dwellings in connection with it, some inhabited and some abandoned. The Grotte des Vierges is entered by steps descending into the principal chamber that is lighted by a window and is furnished with a fireplace. At one of the angles is a circular pit, six feet deep, with a groove at top for the reception of a cover. This was a silo for grain. From the first chamber entrance is obtained to a second much larger, that has in it a fireplace as well, and a staircase leading into a little oratory in which is an altar. The same staircase communicates with a lower chamber, probably intended as a cellar, for though the hermit might be frugal in meat there was no ban on the drink. The rock-dwelling nearest to the Grotte des Vierges on the left hand was of considerable proportions and pretence. It consisted of large halls, and was in several stages. The windows are broken away, the floors are gone, and it is reduced to a wreck. Below this series of cave-dwellings is the Fountain of Andu?e of crystal water, supposed to be endowed with miraculous properties. The whole hill is moreover pierced with galleries and store-chambers, and served as a refuge in time of war, in which the villagers of Lavardin concealed their goods. The noble ruin of the castle shows that it was once of great majesty. It was battered down by the Huguenots, who for the purpose dragged a cannon to the top of the church tower.

Nearer to Vend?me is the Ch?teau of Rochambeau. The present mansion that has replaced the ancient castle is a very insignificant and tasteless structure. All the interest it possesses consists in its dependencies that are rock-hewn. The bass-court is reached through a long and lofty gallery bored athwart the rock, and issuing from it we find ourselves in a sort of open well, probably originally natural but appropriated and adapted by man to his needs. This vast depression, the walls of which are seventy-five feet high, is circular, and measures eighty feet in diameter. Round it are cellars and chambers for domestic purposes. Others are accessible from the gallery that leads to the court. One of them, the Cave-Noire, possesses a chimney bored upwards through the rock to the level of the surface. Another peculiarity of this cavern is that along one side, throughout its length, 120 feet, are rings cut in the rock showing tokens of having been fretted by usage. They are at the height of four feet above the soil, and are on an average four feet ten inches apart. A second range is three feet or four feet higher up. In an adjoining cavern are similar ranges of rings. A third is cut almost at the level of the soil. Precisely the same arrangement is to be found at Varennes hard by in artificial caves still employed as stables, and some as dwellings for families.

In the park is shown the cave in which the Duke of Beaufort, the Roi des Halles, was concealed when he escaped from the prison of Vincennes. Fran?ois de Vend?me, Duke of Beaufort, was a grandson of Henri Quatre, a man of inordinate conceit and of very limited intelligence. During the regency that began in 1643, he obtained the confidence of Anne of Austria, but his vanity rendered him insupportable, and he went out of his way to insult the regent, so that she sent him to Vincennes. Voltaire passes a severe judgment on him. He says of the Duke: "He was the idol of the people, and the instrument employed by able men for stirring them up into revolt; he was the object of the raillery of the Court, and of the Fronde as well. He was always spoken of as the Roi des Halles, the Market-King." One day he asked the President Bellevue whether he did not think that he--Beaufort--would change the face of affairs if he boxed the ears of the Duke of Elbeuf. "I do not think such an act would change anything but the face of the Duke of Elbeuf," gravely replied the magistrate.

There are in the Quartier S. Lubin at Vend?me chambers still occupied in the face of the cliff, high up and reached by structural galleries.

At Lisle, on the river above Vend?me, are many caves, one of which was the hospital or Maladerie.

Above Tours and Marmoutier, on the road to Vouvray, is La Roche Corbon. The cliff is pierced with windows and doors, and niches for a pigeonry. This, till comparatively recently, was a truly Troglodyte village. But well-to-do inhabitants of Tours have taken a fancy to the site and have reared pretentious villas that mask the face of the cliff, and with the advent of these rich people the humble cave-dwellers have "flitted." One singular feature remains, however, unspoiled. A mass of the cretaceous tufa has slipped bodily down to the foot of the crag, against which it leans in an inclined position. This was eviscerated and converted into two cottages, but the cottagers have been ejected, and it is now a villa residence. An acquaintance at Tours has rented it for his family as a summer seat.

Some fifty or sixty years ago La Roche Corbon was "a village sculptured up the broken face of the rocks, with considerable skill, and what with creeping vines, snatches of hanging gardens, an attempt here and there at a division of tenements, by way of slight partitions cut from the surface, wreaths of blue smoke issuing out of apertures and curling up the front, and the old feudal tower, called Lanterne de la Roche Corbon, crowning the summit, the superincumbent pinnacle of excavated rock on which it stands looking as if it were ready to fall and crush the whole population beneath, this lithographed village has altogether a curiously picturesque look." But at Beaumont-la-Ronce, north of Tours, may be seen a whole street of cave habitations still occupied, wreathed with vines and traveller's joy.

In the department of Maine et Loire, and in a portion of Vienne, whole villages are underground.

There is often very valuable vineyard land that has to be walled round and every portion economised. What is done is this: the owner digs a quarry in the surface; this forms a sort of pit accessible on one side, the stone taken from this being employed to fence round his property. Then, for his own dwelling, he cuts out chambers in the rock under his vineyard, looking through windows and a door into the quarry hole. For a chimney he bores upwards, and then builds round the opening a square block of masonry, out of which the smoke escapes.

A whole village, or rather hamlet, may therefore consist of--as far as one can see--nothing but a series of chimneys standing on the ground among the vines. Those who desire to discover the inhabitants must descend into the quarries to these rabbit warrens.

In some villages the people live half above ground and half below. At St. Leger, near Loudun, is a fine mediaeval castle, with a fosse round it cut out of the rock: and this fosse is alive with people who have grubbed out houses for themselves in the rock through which the moat has been excavated.

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 scraps 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 scraps 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 Passy, 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 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."

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 scraps 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 fa?ades 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 circumstances, 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 spacious 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 bacchanalian orgie is going forward."

"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 assembly 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 assembly 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 exactitude 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 Villaines 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 association. 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 cur?, whose name is remembered with affection, the Abb? 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 Association, 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 associates. 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 V?z?re, is the hamlet of Grioteaux, planted on a terrace in a cave, the rock overhangs the houses. Above the cluster, 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 C?l? that flows into the Lot passes under noble cliffs of fawn and orange-tinted limestone, and the road here is called Le D?fil? 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.

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