Letter to the Editor. 



115 



which, alas ! are carrying away the stone blasted from the noble time-worn cliffs. 

 It is used to continue a pier or breakwater planned by the great Napoleon to give 

 more security to the waters of the east bay, intended by him as a harbour of 

 refuge. 



You soon reach a network of minute rills that trickle their way to the sea, 

 after being many times stayed in their course to form pools for the numerous 

 washerwomen, who (each kneeling in her basket) soap and chatter away, utterly 

 regardless of the archaeological or geological past. These little streams are the 

 modern representatives of the furious torrent that once boiled through the 

 romantic gorge of St. Louis, now the boundary between France and Italy. A. 

 few hundred yards from the sea, under the bridge which at once unites and 

 divides the republic and the kingdom, a picturesque aqueduct tells how the 

 Romans once stole from its waters to fertilize the adjacent slopes. Huge water- 

 worn boulders and rocks are scattered around ; they lie tossed like children's 

 playthings on either side of a smooth descending track of unbroken stone, slippery 

 as ice, bearing witness to the tremendous force with which the torrent must once 

 have rushed between those lofty walls. 



You cross these rills, and pass a sentry box tenanted by a harmless -looking 

 Italian soldier, who smokes the pipe of peace and cultivates the acquaintance of 

 the washerwomen, and find yourself in Italy. 



The road passes close to the many arches of the railway, and begins to ascend, 

 occupying a shelf of rock about 20ft. above the level of the sea. On the left 

 rises a rough bit of cliff, up which straggle uneven pathways leading to the 

 platform already mentioned, from which you enter the ancient caves, and can 

 watch the blasting and quarrying of the rock just beyond. 



The railway has pierced a tunnel through the projecting point, and has cut the 

 platform in two, thus rendering the approach to the first three caves rather 

 difficult. These three have been emptied of all accumulation of soil, and you 

 tread on a smooth rocky floor, but they once contained many feet of earth mixed 

 with bones and flints, similar to the fourth cave, which we were fortunate enough 

 to find in a different condition. Re-crossing the railway and rounding the 

 promontory or cliff, you enter at once into this fourth cave, the walls of which 

 have as yet been left unblasted by the quarrymen, who, however, have usurped 

 and altered the rest of the platform and the face of the lofty cliff that towers 

 overhead. 



At our first visit a labourer was lazily scraping a flooring of soft black 

 mould, different in colour and substance from the surrounding soil, and full of 

 broken bones of all sizes, numberless flakes and nodules of flint, masses of burnt 

 conglomerate, and various other fragments. 



It was here that we gathered the specimens now placed in the Wiltshire 

 Archaeological Museum. The diffculty was not to find, but to carry away. The 

 prospect of a walk back to Mentone with heavily-laden pockets and hands rather 

 appalled us. For our general appearance of stonemasons returning from work 

 we cared but little. 



The man who was already in possession offered us what small discoveries he 

 had made, and seemed to think a few sous infinitely preferable to old teeth, 

 bones, and flints. It was a very singular thing that the bones of small birds, 

 rats, and rabbits, were found among the huge relics of the Cervus Elephas and 



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