CAVE DWELLINGS OF MEN. 



4i 



light from the front ; the houses, as a whole, are dry, warm in 

 winter and cool in summer, and do not suffer from lack of venti- 

 lation ; and their inhabitants, as a rule, are a healthy and vigor- 

 ous people. Some of the proprietors have whitened the fronts of 

 their dwellings, and have planted gardens in the ground over 

 them and in front of them, so as to give their homes a not un- 

 pleasing air ; and the cave dwellings are much drier and more 

 healthful than city basements. 



Another group of inhabited caves is described in La Nature 

 by M. Brossard de Corbigny as stretching for the length of a kilo- 



Fig. 12. The Grottoes of Meschers, in the Blfff, Charente-Inferieure, France. 

 (From a water-color sketch by M. Brossard de Corbigny.) 



metre along the right bank of the river Gironde, at Meschers, in the 

 Charente-Inferieure, France. " They are excavated in a high bluff 

 of shell-rock, which is crowned above them by a number of wind- 

 mills, some still active while others are disused, and face the 

 broad river, commanding a view of the sea and the Cordouan 

 Tower in the distance. The caves are partly natural and partly 

 the work of man. They can not be seen from the top of the bluff, 

 and are accessible by goat-paths descending from the mills not 

 very pleasant walking for women and children, especially where 

 it has been necessary to cut stepping-notches in the rock. Not all 

 the paths are equally difficult of descent, and some leading to the 

 stations of the lobster-fishers go down to a kind of ladder that 

 reaches to the water's edge. Whatever path one follows, he is 

 sure at about a third of the distance down to come upon an exca- 

 vation suggesting the nest of some gigantic sea-bird of the olden 

 time ; but he will soon observe that the bottoms of the caves and 

 the roofs have been made smooth by the hand of man, while the 

 great openings looking out upon -the sea bear marks of erosion by 



