"The rock galleries, though now only tenanted by griffons, are very complete and perfect, and beautifully built. Long galleries wind backwards and forwards in the cliff side, their walls being built with dressed stone, flush with the precipice, and often opening into spacious chambers. Tier after tier rise one after another with projecting windows, connected by narrow staircases, carried sometimes upon arches, and in the upper portions rarely broken away. In many of the upper chambers to which we were let down, the dust of ages had accumulated, undisturbed by any foot save that of the birds of the air; and here we rested during the heat of the day, with the plains and lake set as in a frame before us. We obtained a full zoological harvest, as in three days we captured fourteen nests of griffons."
Although these caverns and rocky passages are much more accessible than most of the places whereon the Griffons build, the natives never venture to enter them, being deterred not so much by their height, as by their superstitious fears. The Griffons instinctively found out that man never entered these caverns, and so took possession of them.
As the young Griffons are brought up in these lofty and precipitous places, it is evident that their first flight must be a dangerous experiment, requiring the aid of the parent birds. At first the young are rather nervous at the task which lies before them, and shrink from trusting themselves to the air. The parents, however, encourage them to use their wings, take short flights in order to set them an example, and, when they at last venture from the nest, accompany and encourage them in their first journey.
Even this habit has been noted by the sacred writers, and been forcibly employed as an image of divine protection. See the Song of Moses, in which the aged leader, whose forty years' work was at last finished, recapitulates the mercies vouchsafed to the people of Israel, and exhorts them against the sin of ingratitude: "For the Lord's portion is His people; Jacob is the lot of His inheritance.
"He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; He led him about, He instructed him, He kept him as the apple of His eye.
"As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings;
"So the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him" (Deut. xxxii. 9-12).
The strength of flight of the Vulture is also noticed by the sacred writers. See, for example, Exod. xix. 4: "Ye have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles' (nesherim) wings, and brought you unto myself."
This passage had a peculiar force when addressed to the Hebrews, the Vulture being one of the chief emblems of Egyptian power, and its outspread wings continually recurring on the grand monuments and temples with which they must have been so familiar.
Strangely enough, in their second captivity, the Jews met with the same emblem among the Assyrians. For example, their god Nisroch, whom we find mentioned as specially worshipped by Sennacherib, was a vulture-headed deity, bearing not only the head of the bird, but also its wings. The vast wings of the Vulture were by the Assyrians used as types of Divine power, and were therefore added, not only to human figures, but to those of beasts. The human-headed and vulture-winged bulls of Nineveh, with which we are now so familiar, are good examples of this peculiar imagery.