PRIMIGENIAL SKELETONS. 15 



while the left hand was supporting the side of the head. The 

 teeth are large and strong, but much used ; the front teeth are 

 nearly as thick as ordinary molars. Near the right hand was a 

 crystal of quartz, similar to those found on the rocks around to 

 this day, but pointed at one end, and about two inches long and 

 an inch and a half thick ; some suppose this to be the top of the 

 handle of a knife. The head was ornamented with chaplets of 

 deer teeth and shells. By the remains and on the bones is seen 

 the same deposit of red ochre that was noticed on all the other 

 skeletons. Several slabs of stone were found, which seemed to 

 have formed part of a dolmen. The skeleton, however, was not 

 resting in a palaeolithic stratum, though it is considered that these 

 remains are pre-neolithic. A few metres below it, however, in 

 a stratum that is decidedly palaeolithic, were found several huge 

 mammoth bones the hip-joint head of the thigh bone (femur) 

 and the socket of the pelvis : beneath these was found the remains 

 of a fire a line of black in the stratum and a large flint instru- 

 ment, thus proving that man was contemporary with the mam- 

 moth. 



The length, or depth, of this cave was once at least forty-five 

 metres ; and its mouth appeared smaller when it opened nearer 

 the sea, before quarrying destroyed it, and, in particular, removed 

 nearly the whole of its eastern side. At present its depth is about 

 twenty metres, though the end is but a mere crack. It now ap- 

 pears as a huge fissure that rends the face of the lower end of the 

 Rochers Rouges for fifteen metres to nearly the height of the cliff ; 

 but from the sloping and irregular level of its own earth floor, 

 which rises several yards above that of the base of the cliff, it is 

 only thirty or forty feet high, and narrows at the top to a mere 

 crack. In width it is about four metres, diminishing inward. 

 Within the dark brown mold filling the lowest levels of this 

 cave, which for facility of reference is called No. 5, were found 

 also the skeletons of 1884 and 1892. 



The rocks in which these human remains, bones of animals, 

 and flint instruments have from time to time been discovered are 

 situated at the east end of Mentone, and extend toward the sea, 

 which washes their rough rocky beach ; they rise on the other 

 side of the little stream of the St. Louis ravine that divides France 

 from Italy, and are therefore on Italian soil. Round their base runs 

 the narrow old Roman road, which crosses a little bridge of the 

 same date, immediately after rounding the corner. These ruddy 

 colored cliffs are composed of the secondary cretaceous limestone, 

 and contain many crevices and small caverns, in which, mixed 

 with the softer earth covering the floor to many yards in depth, 

 have been found from time to time mammalian bones, with shells 

 and Crustacea, imbedded in places in hard sand and calcareous 



