I have given elsewhere a very full account of the cave--a den of
robbers beside which that to which Gil Blas was carried was a paradise
--La Crouzate on the Causse de Gramat in the Department of Lot. I will
therefore here mention it but superficially. At the entrance are
notches in the rock, showing that at one time it was closed by a door.
A rapid descent is suddenly brought to a standstill by an opening in
the floor of a veritable _oubliette_, and this opening is crossed
only by a bridge of poles, the hand helping to maintain the balance by
pressing against the wall of rock on the right hand. Then comes a
second hollow, but not so serious, and then a third that can only be
descended by a ladder. This opens into a hall in the midst of which
yawns a horrible chasm, across which lies a rough bridge of poles that
give access to some small chambers beyond, which had formerly been
tenanted by the brigands who had their lair in this cavern. Notches in
the walls of the well show that across it were laid poles that
sustained a pulley, by means of which a bucket could be let down to the
well 265 feet, for water. My cousin, Mr. George Young, actually found
remains of the crane employed for the purpose at the bottom of the
well. About the year 1864, M. Delpons, prefect of the Department of
Lot, observing a huge block of limestone lying in a field near La
Crouzate, had it raised, and discovered beneath it twelve skeletons
ranged in a circle, their feet inwards, and an iron chain linking them
together; probably the remains of the bandits who made of La Crouzate
their den, whence they issued to rob in the neighbourhood. According to
the local tradition, the peasants of the surrounding country paid a
poll-tax for every sheep and ox they possessed so as to raise a levée
which should sweep the Causse of these marauders, and it was due to
this effort that the band was captured and every member of it hung to
the branches of the walnut tree beneath which lies the broad stone.
At Gargas, near Montzéjeau, in Hautes Pyrenées, is a prehistoric cavern
of considerable extent. In it have been found sealed up in stalagmite
the remains of primitive man. Now the significant fact exists that just
ten years before the outbreak of the French Revolution this cave was
inhabited by Blaise Ferrage, a stone-mason, who at the age of twenty-
two deliberately threw aside his trade and retired into the grotto,
whence he sallied forth to seize, murder, and eat children and young
girls. Men also he shot, strangled, or stabbed, and dragged to his
lair, there to devour their carcases.
For three years this monster terrorized the countryside. The number of
his victims was innumerable. As last he was caught and broken on the
wheel in December 1782. There is no evidence that the naked prehistoric
men who had inhabited the cave of Gargas were cannibals.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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