Page:A book of the Cevennes (-1907-).djvu/225

Rh This I relate as a caution to future visitors to the cañon of the Ardèche. If they intend to return by carriage to Vallon, let them remember that they will have to drag back with them the boat en queue.

At S. Marcel is a notable cavern that may be visited from the village or from the river, near the bank of which is a lodge for the man who undertakes to act as guide through its halls and galleries, and illumine them with Bengal lights. The grotto was discovered in 1838 by a man in pursuit of a rabbit. The cavern extends for several kilometres underground, and is rich in stalactites and stalagmites. The main gallery was the channel of an ancient river formed by the drainage of the fissured causse of Bidon and S. Remèze. This corridor, which is without incrustations, leads to le Balcon, a vertical wall thirty feet high, over which the ancient river fell in cascade. This is surmounted by an iron ladder. The second portion of the cavern consists of another long gallery conducting to the Forêt-Noire, a stone cascade of sixty feet, up which one mounts by a second iron ladder, to attain to the third portion of the cave, the Cathedral, where is the finest group of stalagmites in the whole grotto. Two more ladders lead to the Catacombs, a chaos of blocks fallen from the roof, and remarkable for its "bassins de dentelles," or "gours"—that is to say, a series of basins as holy-water stoups, formed by incrustations. I will let M. Martel describe them:—

"Here begins one of the most curious and admirable stalagmitic formations to be found in these caverns. Imagine if you can a series of irregular basins set in the wall and superposed in retreat one above the other, forming steps—they are of various widths and depths, from a few décimètres