The Subterranean World

by G. Hartwig

But caverns have not always proved safe places of refuge, and a barbarous enemy has often used them for the destruction of those who there vainly sought safety. Thus, in Palestine, the Jews, who hid themselves with their wives and children in deep caverns hollowed in the flanks of a precipitous mountain, could not escape the satellites of Herod, who, let down from above in large baskets or tubs, put these defenceless fugitives to the sword. During the Gallic war Cæsar ordered his lieutenant Crassus to wall up the mouths of the caves in which the inhabitants of Aquitaine had sought a refuge, and many of them were thus immured alive.

In the year 1510, when the French army, on its retreat from Italy, was traversing the defiles of Piedmont, the rearguard, commanded by the famous Chevalier Bayard, the good knight ‘without fear or reproach,’ having halted at Longara, the mercenaries, who formed a considerable part of his troops, spread over the country, pillaging and destroying wherever they went.

To escape from these savage bands, the nobles of the district persuaded about two thousand of the peasantry to accompany them, with their families and an abundant supply of provisions, into the Cave of Longara, which forms a vast though low vaulted hall, about 1,200 feet long and 300 feet broad, but with an entrance so narrow that only a single person can pass at a time. The mercenaries, having discovered the secret of the cave, rushed to the spot, eager for pillage. The unfortunate refugees vainly strove to soften the hearts of these barbarians, but, finding all supplications vain, they took courage from despair, and, favoured by the natural strength of the cave, repelled the attack of the first banditti who attempted to force an entrance.

The ruffians now returned to the charge in greater numbers; but being still unable to accomplish their object, they formed the diabolical plan of setting fire to a heap of hay, straw, and greenwood, which they piled up before the mouth of the grotto. The smoke penetrated into the cave and in a short time the two thousand wretches it contained—mostly women and children—were suffocated. Bayard, enraged at this barbarous act, which sullied his own honour, ordered the ringleaders to be seized and hanged before the entrance of the cave.

While these malefactors were in the hands of the executioner, a lad of fourteen, the only survivor of the catastrophe, was seen to crawl out of the grotto. Bayard ordered every aid to be rendered him which his state required, and could not refrain from tears while listening to his lamentable tale. The boy related that when the smoke began to spread in the cavern, the nobles, resolving to die at least like soldiers, wanted to sally forth, sword in hand, but were prevented by the peasants, who fell upon them and disarmed them, saying, ‘You have led us hither, and here with us you shall die!’ Thus, a few moments before a common doom was to destroy both nobles and serfs, a horrible strife had arisen between them in the darkness of the cave.

‘And thou, my friend,’ asked Bayard, ‘by what miracle hast thou escaped death?’ ‘I had remarked,’ answered the lad, ‘a feeble ray of daylight in a corner of the grotto, and applied my mouth to the crevice through which it passed. I soon fainted, but this small portion of fresh air preserved my life. When I recovered my senses, I remembered all that had passed, but I was alone, and it took me a long time to crawl out of the grotto.’ ‘All thy companions,’ answered Bayard, ‘have been buried, by my orders, in consecrated ground; and behold! there hang their assassins!’

Unfortunately the history of our land is tarnished with similar deeds of atrocity.

A cave in the Isle of Egg, one of the Hebrides, has a very narrow entrance, through which one can hardly creep on knees and hands, but it rises steep and lofty within, and runs into the bowels of the rock to the depth of 255 measured feet. The rude and stony bottom of this cave is strewed with the bones of men, women, and children, the sad relics of the ancient inhabitants of the island, 200 in number, of whose destruction the following story is related. ‘The Macdonalds, of the Isle of Egg, a people dependent on Clanranald, had done some injury to the Laird of Macleod. The tradition of the isle says that it was by a personal attack on the chieftain, in which his back was broken; but that of the other isles bears that the injury was offered to two or three of the Macleods, who, landing upon Egg, and behaving insolently towards the islanders, were bound hand and foot, and turned adrift in a boat, which the winds and waves safely conducted to Skye. To avenge the offence given, Macleod sailed with such a body of men as rendered resistance hopeless. The natives, fearing his vengeance, concealed themselves in the cavern; and, after strict search, the Macleods went on board their galleys, after doing what mischief they could, concluding the inhabitants had left the isle. But next morning they espied from their vessels a man upon the island, and, immediately landing again, they traced his retreat, by means of a light snow on the ground, to the cavern. Macleod then summoned the subterraneous garrison, and demanded that the inhabitants who had offended him should be delivered up. This was peremptorily refused. The chieftain thereupon caused his people to divert the course of a rill of water, which, falling over the mouth of the cave, would have prevented his purposed vengeance. He then kindled at the entrance of the cavern a huge fire, and maintained it until all within were destroyed by suffocation.’[^[22]]

In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, a no less horrible deed occurred during the campaign of Essex against the Irish rebels. When the English forces entered Antrim, the Scots of that county had sent their wives and children, their aged and their sick, to the island of Rathlin for safety. Sir John Norris was directed by the Earl to cross over and kill all that he could find. The run up the Antrim coast was rapidly and quietly accomplished. Before an alarm could be given the English had landed close to the church which bears Columba’s name. The castle was taken by storm, and every soul in it—about two hundred—put to the sword. It was then discovered that the greater part of the fugitives, chiefly mothers and their little ones, were hidden in the caves about the shores. ‘There was no remorse,’ says Froude, ‘not even the faintest shadow of perception that the occasion called for it. They were hunted out as if they had been seals or otters, and all destroyed.’

When the barbarian Genghis Khan invaded Koondooz in Central Asia, 700 men took refuge, with their wives and families, in the cave of Yeermalik, and defended themselves so valiantly that, after trying in vain to destroy them by fire, the invader built them in with huge natural blocks of stone, and left them to die of hunger. In the year 1840, the cave was visited by Captain Burslem and Lieutenant Sturt, probably the only Europeans that ever entered its sepulchral recesses, as the people in the neighbourhood believe it to be the abode of Sheitan (the devil), and are as reluctant to guide a stranger as to explore it themselves. The entrance is halfway up a hill, and is fifty feet high, with about the same breadth. Not far from the entrance the travellers found a passage between two jagged rocks, possibly the remains of Genghis Khan’s fatal wall, so narrow that they had some difficulty in squeezing through, and then before long came to a drop of sixteen feet, down which they were lowered by ropes. Here they left two men to haul them up on their return, and bade farewell to the light of day. The narrow path, which led by the edge of a black abyss, sometimes over a flooring of smooth ice for a few feet, widened gradually till they reached a damp and dripping hall, so vast in size that the light of their torches did not enable them to form any idea of its size. In this colossal hall, or rather tomb, they found the remains of the victims of Genghis Khan: hundreds of skeletons in a perfectly undisturbed state—one, for instance, still holding the skeletons of two infants in its long arms—while some of the bodies had been preserved, and lay shrivelled, like the mummies reposing in the sepulchral vault of the Great St. Bernard.