EUROPEAN CAVES 
pay for the privilege — which, as it 
happened, was accorded the Museum’s 
representative as the first American — 
to see the wonders inside. Ordinarily, 
the natural wonders of the caverns 
are more or less discolored with mud, 
but here is gallery after gallery of be- 
wildering forests of pillars and pendants 
and posts —all a pure white and glit- 
tering as if studded with myriads of 
diamonds. Here and there the stalac- 
tites hang in large sheets like folded 
draperies and by placing a light behind 
them the translucent substance flashes 
up into colors of 
green and rose 
too beautiful to 
be — deseribed. 
No fairy palace 
was ever more 
adorned! You 
are led along de- 
vious passages, 
stepping again 
and again 
lakelets of 
visibly 
in 
in- 
clear 
water and when 
on dry footing 
you are warned 
to 
cumspectly for 
fear of obliter- 
ating some an- 
cient human footprints that are faintly 
visible under the thin coat of stalagmite 
which covers the clay floor. Bones and 
skulls of the giant cave bear and other 
animals lie all about, cemented in place. 
Finally, near the extreme inner end of 
the cavern comes the real object of the 
laborious journey, viz., the representa- 
tions of two bison (male and female) 
modeled in clay. The figures which are 
about two feet in length, are propped 
against the sloping side of a rock which 
rises from the floor, and in front of the 
move cir- 
AND EARLY MAN 245 
animals on the floor there are some trac- 
ings as if the artist had here sketched 
and improvised before beginning his real 
work. About twenty-five feet away in 
a low side chamber is to be seen the 
place where the modeler scraped to- 
gether the clay off the floor and kneaded 
it. Two or three worked rolls of his 
material still lie there. The whole thing 
looks as if done a week ago and yet the 
bison has been absent from the locality 
probably for thousands of years. 
The last suggestion of skepticism is in 
keeping with the general impression that 
er Oa Ba 
=. -_ 
ee’ 
4 
Sagy 
7 see 
The Schweizersbild station near Schaffhausen, Switzerland. This limestone 
excrescence rises abruptly from a meadow-like spot, and in its shelter — facing 
approximately west — people lived in Magdalenian times. 
who gave three years to the investigation of the site, stands on the right 
Dr. Jakob Nuesch, 
the visitor retains from the painted caves. 
It is a most baffling experience. When 
the investigation is confined to the stra- 
tified deposits everything is beautifully 
simple. Art objects have a definitely 
ascertainable place in the series and go 
back to Aurignacian times. The cave 
art proper is of the same general style 
as that of the stratified refuse and must 
of course be of the same date; moreover, 
the animals represented are in nearly all 
cases either extinct or absent from the 
region. And yet almost all the mural 
