The haunts of the bandits in the times of Herod must have been very much like those in Dordogne. They were high up in the face of precipices in Galilee, and he was able only to subdue these gangs of freebooters by letting his soldiers down in baskets from the top of the cliffs, with machines for forcing entrance. [Footnote: Josephus, "Antiq.," xiv. 6.] Stanley says [Footnote: "Sinai and Palestine," 1856, pp. 148-149.]: "Like all limestone formations, the hills of Palestine abound in caves. In these innumerable rents, and cavities, and holes, we see the shelter of the people of the land in those terrible visitations, as when 'Lot went up out of Zoar, and dwelt in a cave.' Or as when 'in the days of Uzziah, King of Judah, they fled before the earthquake to the ravine of the mountains;' to the rocky fissures, safer, even though themselves rent by the convulsions, than the habitations of man. We see in them, also, the hiding-places which served sometimes for the defence of robbers and insurgents, sometimes for the refuge of those of whom 'the world was not worthy;' the prototypes of the catacombs of the early Christians, of the caverns of the Vaudois and the Covenanters. The cave of the five kings at Makkedah; the 'caves, and dens, and strongholds, and 'rocks,' and 'pits,' and 'holes' in which the Israelites took shelter from the Midianites in the time of Gideon, from the Philistines in the time of Saul; the cleft of the cliff Etam, into which Samson went down to escape the vengeance of his enemies; the caves of David at Adullam and at Maon, and of Saul at Engedi; the cave in which Obadiah hid the prophets of the Lord; the caves of the robber hordes above the plain of Gennesareth; the sepulchral caves of the Gadarene demoniacs; the cave of Jotopata, where Josephus and his countrymen concealed themselves in their last struggle, continue from first to last what has been called the cave-life of the Israelite nation." The vast grotto of Lombrive in Ariège has been already mentioned. It became a den of a band of murderous brigands at the beginning of the nineteenth century. A detachment of soldiers was sent to dislodge them in 1802; to reach the great hall access is had by crawling through a narrow passage, and here the robbers murdered as many as 146 of the soldiers, taking them one after another as they emerged from the passage, and cutting their throats. [Footnote: "Spelunca," Paris, 1905, t. vi. p. 169.] The passage now bears the name of that of _Du Crime_.