In looking at these very venerable ancestors it is the face that naturally attracts the greater attention. There is some expression in a skull, an expression of melancholy and surprise, with a suggestion of ferocity. Conspicuous, especially, is the look of wonder, the open mouth, the staring teeth, the solemn, hollow eye sockets. What images must have been formed within those sunken orbits! Upon what a world must the vanished eyes once have gazed, upon what strange beasts, upon what fantastic glades and woods!
When the Red Cliff was inhabited the sea was probably at some distance. From the entry to the cave one would have looked, at one age, over a luxurious subtropical country, glaring with heat, and at another era over a land chilled with ice and deep in snow. During the lifetime of the old lady of the bracelets the climate is assumed to have been cold and damp, the climate, indeed, of England at its worst. There must be, therefore, a bond of sympathy between the aged dame and the present day migrant, who has fled to the Riviera to escape a British winter.
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.
A SIDE STREET IN MENTONE.
