252 SUBTERRANEAN VILLAGES. 



nests about six miles from Beni-Abbas : all the habitations 

 of this place are of the same kind as those already de- 

 scribed." 



Colonel Silvertop, in an interesting memoir on the La- 

 custrine Basins of Baza and Alhama, in the New Edin- 

 burgh Philosophical Journal, vol. ix., gives an account of 

 a subterranean village called Benamaurel, in Granada in 

 Spain, which is on a larger scale than those mentioned by- 

 Captain Lyon. It would probably be a difficult antiqua- 

 rian investigation to trace the origin of these Spanish sub- 

 terranean dwellings, inhabited by a considerable population 

 of the poorer classes in various parts of the province of 

 Granada. They may be observed in the outskirts of the 

 cities of Granada, Guadiz, and Baza ; but are most nu- 

 merous in the villages of Benamaurel, Castillejos, Caniles, 

 and CuUar, where they have been excavated in the marl 

 strata^ so extensively deposited in that basin, and in those 

 of Benabra, and another in the valley of Guadiz. In 

 Benabra, the entire population lives in ca^es,— the church, 

 the curate's house, and the venta being the only edifices 

 seen above ground. In the neighbourhood of Bagnovea, in 

 the pope's territories, there is a village, of which an Italian 

 traveller has observed, that a few stones for the purpose of 

 closing the entrance of the cavern, a hole for the smoke to 

 go out of, and an aperture to admit the light, suffice to com- 

 plete each habitation. In the Isle of Ponza, near the Bay 

 of Naples, is another town of the same description, the in- 

 habitants preferring to reside in caves, although the island 

 abounds in good building materials. In France, many vil- 

 lages of inhabited caverns still exist. Swinburne describes 

 a village of the same kind, which occurs in the province of 

 Andalusia in Spain. The natives of New-Holland and 

 other countries still shelter themselves in caves and ca- 

 verns, and in the hollows of trees. At an early period, the 

 inhabitants of Burope appear also to have lived principally 

 in natural caves and caverns, or in such as they dug in soft 

 rocks. 



The subject of caves has recently attracted considerable 

 attention ; but more on the part of the geologist than of the 

 antiquarian. It has been ascertained that in caves in the 

 south of France human remains had been found along with 

 bones of quadrupeds, now no longer met with in a living 



