MODERN TROGLODYTES
holes for the purpose of occasional cleaning out. The walls are scored with concave grooves slanting downwards, uniting and leading into small basins. The moisture condensing on the sides trickled into these runnels and supplied the basins with drinking water. The mangers have holes bored in the stone through which passed the halters. There are indications that the cattle were hauled up by means of a windlass.
That these were not places of refuge in times of danger, but were permanent habitations, would appear from the fact that those of Lamouroux contain mural paintings, and that in them, in addition to stables, there is a pigeonry. In one or two instances the piers that support the roof have sculptured capitals, of the twelfth or thirteenth century. In the cave-dwelling still tenanted at Siourat is cut the date, I.D. 1585, surmounted by a cross.[1]
I have given the plan of the caves of Lamouroux in my "Deserts of Southern France."
How general rock habitations were at one time in Perigord may be judged by the prevalence of the place-name Cluseau, which always meant a cave that was dwelt in, with the opening walled up, window and door inserted; roffi is applied to any ordinary grotto, whether inhabited or not.
It would be quite impossible for me to give a list of the cave-dwellings in France still inhabited, or occupied till comparatively recent times, they are so numerous and are to be found in every department where is the chalk or the limestone, sandstone or volcanic tufa.
They are to be met with not only in those parts of France from which the above specimens have been taken and described, but also in Var, Bouches du Rhone, Aveyron, Gard, Lozère, Cantal, Charente, Vienne, &c.
There is a good deal of sameness in the appearance of
- ↑ Lalande (Ph.), Les Orottes artificielles des environs de Brive. In Mémoires de la Soc. de Spéliologie. Paris, 1897.
56
