Page:Cliff Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe.djvu/181

 Quite as curious, and with a less tragic history is La Roche Gageac on the Dordogne, below Sarlat. "Ma chère patrie," wrote the old choniclerchronicler [sic], Jean Tarde, "une petite ville bien close et très forte dépendant de la temporalité de l'evesque de Sarlet, la quelle ne fut jamais prinse par les Anglais."

The white Jurassic limestone dappled orange, fawn colour, and silver grey, rises 250 feet above the river, the lower portion is in terraces, very narrow, on which are the houses clinging to the rock, cramped between the Dordogne and the cliff which rises 140 to 160 feet above. The old houses are echeloned along the face of the rock, superposed the one on the other, calcined by the sun as they face south, and the rock behind cuts off all northern winds and reflects the glare of the southern sun. This explains the vegetable precocity of the spot, where wallflowers, cactus, roses, luxuriate. It would be too hot were it not for the abundant springs, and the proximity to the Dordogne down which a cool air is wafted.

The habitations are either partly or wholly caves, they do not reach half-way up the rock which overhangs to the west. In the face of the cliff are two castles built into its recesses, one pertained to the Bishop of Sarlat, and the other to the Fénélon family. Both were ideals of a stronghold in the Middle Ages, impossible to escalade or to undermine. In the fifteenth century La Roche Gageac was a walled town containing five châteaux of noble families, juxtaposed and independent of each other, although comprised within the same enclosure. Originally indeed all were under the Bishop of Sarlat, but the Popes had set the example of jobbery for the benefit of their sons and nephews, and the Bishops were not slow to follow the lead. One Bishop made over the principal castle to his brother as a hereditary feof, and others disposed of the rest for money down, so that by the second half of the sixteenth century the town had been dis-