64 THE YORKSHIRE GATES. 



house contained, from coins of Trajan to the wretched 'min- 

 ims' that told of the Empire's decay, mounted their horses to 

 protect their flight. At nightfall all were crouching beneath 

 the dripping roof of the cave, or round the fire that was blazing 

 at its mouth; and a long suffering began, in which the fugitives 

 lost year by year the memory of the civilization from which they 

 came. A few charred bones show how hunger drove them to 

 slay their horses for food. Eeddened pebbles mark the hour 

 when the new vessels they wrought were too weak to stand the 

 fire, and their meal Avas cooked by dropping heated stones into 

 the pot. A time seems to have come when their very spindles 

 were exhausted, and the women who wove in that dark retreat 

 made spindle whorles as they could from the bones that lay 

 about them." 



Besides the invasion of the Engies, referred to by Dr. Green, 

 the British inhabitants of the northern counties were subject to 

 the incessant attacks of the Picts and Scots, whose raids, on the 

 withdrawal of the Roman Legions, were organised on a large 

 scale, and in the pages of Gildas we have a melancholy picture 

 of these results. In the letter written to the Eoman commander 

 in Gaul, in 446, the Britains are described as sheep and the Picts 

 and Scots as wolves. " The barbarians drive us back to the 

 sea, and the sea drives us back again to perish at the hands of 

 the barbarians," are the words put into the mouths of the em- 

 bassy. Moved by despair, the British in the following year take 

 up arms, leave their houses and lands, and, taking shelter in 

 mountains, forests, and caves, succeed for a time in driving back 

 their Pictish and Scottish enemies. In these, the times of their 

 extremity, the inhabitants, no doubt, found welcome shelter in 

 the huge Yorkshire caverns which we have been endeavouring 

 to describe ; and it would probably be during some such occupa- 

 tion that the articles found in- the Yictoria Cave were deposited. 



The actual visit to the Victoria Cave itself was made by our 

 party in very diminished numbers, the third morning finding 

 many of our members on the wing for other parts of the country, 

 and, although made under the most favourable circumstances, the 

 morning sun being bright and warm, the mountain air buoyant 



