The dwelling places of these very early Riviera visitors are still practically unchanged. We enter by the same portal as they did; we tread the floor they trod, and, looking up, we see the very roof of rock that sheltered them and that they knew so well. The great cave—the Barma-Grande—has a fine entry, sixty-five feet in height and some thirteen feet in breadth. The cave is still deep, although its length has been curtailed by the callous quarryman, who has cut away much of the outer face of the cliff to find stone for villas, railway bridges, and motor garages. The cave narrows down to a smooth-sided cleft a few feet wide. This must have been a favourite spot, a cosy corner, an easy lounge after a day’s hunting. The sun passes over the cavern wall as over the face of a dial, moving inch by inch just as it has moved, day by day, for unknown thousands of years. The creeping light serves to record on the rock the passing of time. The cave-wife, busy with flint scraper and unwieldy lumps of mammoth flesh, would note, perhaps with concern, that the sun had already reached a certain grey boss on the wall which told that the height of the day was near and yet that the daily meal was not ready. The sun still falls on the same spot on the wall at the same moment of time, for neither the sun nor the cave has changed. [Illustration: A SIDE STREET IN MENTONE.] [Illustration: MENTONE: RUE MATTONI.] Just in front of the caves of the Baoussé-Roussé, between their entries and the sea, runs the old Roman road. Compared with the colony of Red Cliff it is a modern affair, for it is only a little more than two thousand years old. It ran from the Forum of Rome to Arles, a distance, it is said, of 797 miles. It carried the Roman legions into Gaul. It carried the merchant adventurers from the East, together with as miscellaneous a crowd of wanderers as any road in Europe bears witness of. Many a Roman centurion must have rested in these caves, many an Oriental pedlar laden with strange wares, many a man of arms seeking his fortune in the West, with perhaps a troubadour or two, a jester bound to other Courts, or the aimless man who followed the Wandering Jew. Pirates have used these caves for their tragic affairs, as well as wreckers and honest fishermen. In more recent times smugglers found hereabout convenient depots from which to run their goods across the border; while frontier guards have been posted in these shadows with flintlocks to watch for the unwary buccaneer. Still nearer to the present day one can imagine that the dolorous lover has carved his lady’s name upon the wall of the cave by means of a flint implement which his uneasy foot had unearthed from among the ancient dust of the deserted dwelling-place. Could the life and times of the occupants of the Red Cliff be written, from the days of the first inhabitant to the period of to-day, a history of Europe would be provided which could never be excelled for picturesqueness nor for vivid detail.