62 KELIQULE AQUITANIC^E. 



VI. 



A BURIAL-PLACE OF THE CAVE-DWELLERS OF PERIGOED. By M. Louis LAETET. 



PASSING from Limoges to Agen by railway for the first time, and traversing the 

 tortuous denies of Pe"rigord, we cannot but feel surprise and admiration on seeing 

 the Vezere flow in the deep valley* whose freshness is in marked contrast 

 with its bare and rocky escarpments. These picturesque cliffs, sharply limiting 

 the river's course, and not unfrequently fantastic in shape, attract the traveller's 

 attention, indifferent though he be, by a succession of unexpected and striking 

 effects. Soon the eye becomes familiarized with the forms of the rocks, and we 

 recognize a multitude of cavities in the cliffs. Some of them are natural ; others 

 have been carefully worked out by Man, and are sometimes even now used as 

 portions of the rural habitations. The Romans, Normans, and English have 

 succeeded one another in this little Perigordian Petra; and the chronicles of 

 the Middle Ages comprise curious documents relative to the part played in 

 the wars of those times by the Roc de Tayac, where we still find, cut in the 

 limestone, rooms, galleries, and stables, constituting indeed a veritable castle 

 (see page 4). 



The Cave-dwellers, however, the oldest and strangest of all whom these rocks 

 of Tayac have sheltered, were, without doubt, the Hunters of the Reindeer, who 

 trod our soil when a crowd of strange animals existed here such as the Mam- 

 moth, Lion, Reindeer, Musk Ox, Aurochs, and others, now extinct or completely 

 driven from our climate. The Stations of these Hunters are numerous on 

 the banks of the Vezere (pages 5 and 20) ; and the natural caves which served 

 them for retreats, carefully explored by MM. H. Christy and E. Lartet, have of 

 late years yielded up the secrets of their primitive industry and of their savage 

 life. Little, however, has hitherto been determined as to their ethnic characters 

 and that only from unsatisfactory specimens, found in possibly abnormal positions. 

 It was therefore with lively curiosity that, towards the end of last March, we were 

 made acquainted with the discovery of some Human Skeletons in this district, 

 under conditions which cannot fail to prove their high antiquity. 



His Excellency M. Duruy, the Minister of Public Instruction, from whom 

 studies of this kind receive high encouragement, being desirous of verifying the 



* See the Maps at pages 19 and 29. 



