SOUTERRAINS
with them. Hussein ordered a quantity of combustibles to be piled at the entrance and set on fire. The poor wretches within were all smothered. The Turks waited a few days, and then entered and rifled the bodies. A week later, three natives of the village crept into the cavern to see what had become of their relatives. It is said that they were so overcome by the horror of what they witnessed, that two of them died within a few days. Years after, the Archbishop of Crete blessed the cavern, and the bones of the victims of Turkish barbarity were collected and buried in the outer hall, which has in its centre a lofty stalagmite reaching to the summit, and the walls on all sides are draped with stalactites.
We must not pass over without a word the treatment of the Arabs in Algeria by the French troops, when General Lamorcière suffocated the unfortunate refugees in the caves whither they had fled, in the same way as Cæsar's general had suffocated the Gauls.
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