Page:Cliff Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe.djvu/126

 I was in the valley of the Célé in 1892 with my friend M. Raymond Pons, a daring explorer of avens and caves. There was one cavern in a precipice on the left bank near Brengues that showed tokens of having been a refuge, from having a pole across the entrance. M. Pons obtained a stout rope, and the assistance of half-a-dozen peasants, and was let down over the brink, and by swinging succeeded in obtaining a foothold within. He there found evident traces of former occupation. But how was it entered and left in ancient times? From below it was quite inaccessible, and from above only by the means he employed—a rope.

At Les Mées in the Basses-Alpes is a very similar cave, with two beams across fastened at the ends into the rock, which is a conglomerate, at the height of 350 feet, and quite inaccessible. They are mentioned by the historian Bartel in 1636 as inexplicable by him, and by the residents in the place.

A not less perplexing rock shelter is that of Fadarelles in the Gorges of the Tarn.

Of this M. Martel writes: "In a superb cliff of dolomitic limestone of the cirque of the Beaumes Chauds, M. l'Abbé Solanet was good enough to conduct me beneath the Baume des Fadarelles, a chasm inaccessible, at the height of some- thing like 1770 feet in the face of the precipice, something like the openings of Boundoulaou, but much narrower.

"In it one can see three coarse beams or rather trunks of trees from which the boughs have been cut away, each about 12 feet long. As this opening might well have been that of discharge of a stream, now choked, for the Baumes Chauds and its adjoining fissures, one is led at first to suppose that water had brought down these logs that had fallen into some pot-hole. But this hypothesis is untenable, for it can be seen that these poles have been artificially pointed at each end, and that they have been made firm by