In the dark history of Philip II. of Spain, one of the darkest passages is that of the rebellion and final destruction of the Moors of Granada. Driven to despair by an intolerable tyranny, the unfortunate people at length rose in arms against their oppressors; but all their bravery, aided by the natural strength of their mountain fastnesses, failed to defend them against the superior arms of their pitiless enemy. Defeated in every encounter, driven from every stronghold, thousands perished by famine or the sword, and those who submitted were either condemned to a cruel death or exiled from their native soil. Many were driven to seek a refuge in the caves of the Alpujarras, south-east of Granada, and of the bold sierras that stretch along the southern shores of Spain. Their pursuers followed up the chase with the fierce glee of the hunter tracking the wild beast of the forest to his lair. There they were huddled together, one or two hundred frequently in the same cavern. It was not easy to detect the hiding-place amidst the rocks and thickets which covered up and concealed the entrance. But when it was detected, it was no difficult matter to destroy the inmates. The green bushes furnished the material for a smouldering fire, and those within were soon suffocated by the smoke, or, rushing out, threw themselves on the mercy of their pursuers. Some were butchered on the spot; others were sent to the gibbet or the galleys; while the greater part, with a fate scarcely less terrible, were given up as the booty of the soldiers, and sold into slavery.

Aben Aboo, the last chief of the insurgents, who had hitherto eluded every attempt to seize him, but whose capture was of more importance than that of any other of his nation, had a narrow escape in one of these caverns not far from Berchal, where he lay hid with a wife and two of his daughters. The women were suffocated, with about seventy other persons; but the Morisco chief succeeded in making his escape through an aperture at the further end, which was unknown to his enemies.

Unfortunately, the little king of the Alpujarras, as he was contemptuously called by the Spaniards, was soon after killed in another cavern by a traitor’s hand, and with him fell the last hope of the Moriscos. His corpse, set astride on a mule, and supported erect in the saddle by a wooden frame, concealed beneath ample robes, was led in triumphal procession through the streets of Granada, and then decapitated. The body was given to the rabble, who, after dragging it through the streets with scoffs and imprecations, committed it to the flames, while the head, inclosed in a cage, was set up over the gate which opened on the Alpujarras. There it remained for many a year, no one venturing to remove it, for on the cage was inscribed, ‘This is the head of the traitor Aben Aboo. Let no one take it down, under pain of death.’

The neighbourhood of Gortyna, in the island of Crete, has become celebrated in modern times for a mountain-labyrinth, with numerous and intricate passages, which exists in a valley near it, and in which the myth of the Dædalean labyrinth was probably localised. During the revolutionary war against the Turkish yoke (1822–1828) the Christian inhabitants of the adjacent villages, for months together, lived in this cavern, merely sallying out by day to till their lands, or to gather their crops, when it was safe to do so. Though the dark recesses of the cavern were not very inviting abodes for human beings for any long period, yet the sense of safety gave it, doubtless, a peculiar charm; for no one could approach within range of the numerous muskets pointed from masked loopholes at its entrance, without being immediately shot down; nor could either fire or smoke suffocate or dislodge its inmates, as the entrance is in the side of a steep hill, 500 or 600 feet above the bed of the wild valley in which it is situated, and thus is safe from attack in every direction. History as well as tradition states that, in all troubled times in Crete, the labyrinth of Gortyna has been the retreat of the inhabitants of the neighbourhood; but when Captain Spratt visited it in 1852, its only inhabitants were bats, who, by their mode of hooking on to each other, were hanging from the ceiling like clusters of bees. Under good native guides, he spent nearly two hours in threading its tortuous passages, which turn in so many ways and have so many branches as to justify the conclusion that a master hand must have directed the excavation. The mark of the tool is seen upon every side of the avenues and chambers, indicative of its artificial character.

Less fortunate than their brethren of Gortyna were the unfortunate Cretans who, during the same war, took refuge in the cave of Melidoni. In 1822, when Hussein Bey marched against the neighbouring village, the inhabitants, to the number of three hundred, repaired to the cave, taking with them their valuables and provisions sufficient for six months. The entrance is so narrow and steep that they were perfectly secured against an attack, and the Turks in their first attempt lost twenty-five men. Finding that they refused submission on any terms, Hussein Bey ordered a quantity of combustibles to be brought to the entrance and set on fire. The smoke, rolling into the cavern in immense volumes, drove the miserable fugitives into the remoter chambers, where they lingered a little while longer, but were all eventually suffocated. The Turks waited some days, but still did not dare to enter, and a Greek captive was finally sent down on the promise of his life being spared. The Turks then descended and plundered the bodies. A week afterwards, three natives of the village stole into the cavern to see what had become of their friends and relatives. It is said that they were so overcome by the terrible spectacle that two of them died within a few days. Years afterwards, when the last vestiges of the insurrection had been suppressed, the Archbishop of Crete blessed the cavern, making it consecrated ground; and the bones of the victims were gathered together and partially covered up, in the outer chamber—a vast elliptical hall, about eighty feet in height, and propped in the centre by an enormous stalactitic pillar. On all sides the stalactites hang like fluted curtains from the roof, here in broad sheeted masses, there dropping into single sharp folds, but all on a scale of Titanic grandeur. In this imposing and silent hall, under the black banners of eternal Night, lay heaped the mouldering skulls and bones of the poor Christians. They could not have had a more appropriate sepulchre.

Such have been the atrocities of Turkish warfare within the memory of living man; but French officers have in our days emulated the cruelty of Ottoman commanders, and shown that the nation which boasts of marching at the head of civilisation has still retained much of its ancient Gallic barbarism. When Marshal Pelissier filled with smoke the crowded caves of the Dahra in 1844, and destroyed many hundreds of Kabyls whose great crime it was to defend their country against the French hordes, it has been stated, as an excuse for this atrocity, that he left open some of the entrances to the caves, and that he only resorted to the smoke as a means of compelling the fugitives to come out and surrender; but no such excuse can be pleaded in favour of his successor, St. Arnaud. In the summer of 1845,[[23]] this French commander received private information that a body of Arabs had taken refuge in the cave of Shelas. Thither he marched a body of troops. Eleven of the fugitives came out and surrendered; but it was known to St. Arnaud, though not to any other Frenchman, that five hundred men remained in the cave. All these people Colonel St. Arnaud determined to kill, and at the same time to keep the deed secret even from the troops engaged in the operation, as the smoking of the Caves of the Dahra had not greatly tended to raise France in the public opinion of Europe. Except his brother and Marshal Bugeaud, whose approval was the prize he sought, no one was to know what he did. He contrived to execute both his purposes. Thus he writes to his brother:—‘I had all the apertures hermetically stopped up. I made one vast sepulchre. No one went into the caverns; no one but myself knew that under these there are 500 brigands who will never again slaughter Frenchmen. A confidential report has told all to the marshal, without terrible poetry or imagery. Brother, no one is so good as I am by taste and by nature. From the 8th to the 12th I have been ill, but my conscience does not reproach me. I have done my duty as a commander, and to-morrow I would do the same over again; but I have taken a disgust to Africa.’ With such nauseous sentiment wrote the man, ‘good by taste and nature,’ who seven years later was to attach the memory of his name to the bloody days of December, and to deal with many a French republican as he had dealt with the Arabs.

CHAPTER XVI.
HERMIT CAVES—ROCK TEMPLES—ROCK CHURCHES.

St. Paul of Thebes—St. Anthony—His Visit to Alexandria, and death—Numerous Cave Hermits in the East—St. Benedict in the Cave of Subiaco—St. Cuthbert—St. Beatus—Rock Temples of Kanara—The Wonders of Ellora—Ipsamboul—Rock Churches of Lalibala in Abyssinia—The Cave of Trophonios—The Grotto of St. Rosolia near Palermo—The Chapel of Agios Niketas in Greece—The Chapel of Oberstein on the Nahe—The repentant fratricide.

The dim twilight of a forest, its leafy vaults, its majestic silence, or its foliage moaning in the wind, are all apt to strike the mind with a religious awe. But the solitude and stillness of caverns is equally well adapted to awaken feelings of devotion, and thus we find that contemplative minds in every age, and of every creed, have found in them congenial retreats. The Indian fakir and the Mahometan dervish love the seclusion of the silent grotto, and here also the Hebrew prophets not seldom enjoyed their ecstatic visions.