Sir Thomas Hanbury has also done much for the place. His gardens are well worth seeing. An electric tram will take a visitor along the bay to a fountain erected by Sir Thomas Hanbury, near the frontier of Italy. That frontier runs down the torrent of S. Louis, where may be seen, on a fine day, sketchers and painters engaged in transferring to their books or canvases the impression produced by this ravine, with arches one above the other, for the railway and for the Corniche Road, whilst below are women washing garments in the little stream. The magnificent cliffs rise here in sheer precipices, and are composed of nummulitic limestone. Formerly the headland stretched to the sea, leaving only a strip between the rocks and the waves, along which strip ran the Via Aurelia. The rock was perforated with caves, nine in number. But it has been cut back for building stone, and the grottoes have been much reduced in depth. The caves served as a habitation for man from a remote period, and not solely as a habitation, but also as a sepulchre. The Barma Grande was filled to a depth of thirty feet of deposit, that deposit consisting of fallen stones, bones of beasts, flint weapons and tools, remains of hearths and charcoal, and human skeletons.
It has been dug into by many and various explorers, and not always with judgment, and with precise record of the depths at which various discoveries have been made.
The present proprietor used the soil for the purpose of making a garden, and it was only when he came upon human remains that it occurred to him that he could turn the cavern into a show place, and get more out of it in that way than he could by growing cabbages in the soil removed from it. In these caves a considerable number of skeletons have been found; in the first, the Grotte des Enfants, two bodies were discovered of children of six and four years old, lying at a depth of eight feet, side by side. They had evidently been clothed in little loin-cloths embroidered with pierced shells.
In the fourth cave, the Grotte du Cavillon, was found the skeleton of an adult twenty feet below the surface, lying on his left side, the cheek resting on the left hand, and the head and body had been dusted over with red ochre, which had stained the bones. The head had been covered with a sort of cap made of, or adorned with, perforated shells and dogs’ teeth, and similar ornaments must have been stitched on to garters about his legs.
The sixth cave, Bausso da Torre, furnished two bodies of adults and one of a child, and with these were flint weapons, bracelets, and necklets of shells.
In 1884 M. Louis Julien found a human skeleton lying at a depth of twenty-five feet, the head bedded in red ochre, and near it numerous flakes of flint. Since then others have been found, and the present proprietor has preserved them in situ, under glass, in the cave, at the precise levels at which discovered. In 1892, three were found, all lying on their left sides. One of these had pertained to a young woman. All three had been buried along with their personal ornaments, and all with the ferruginous powder over them.
Finally, in 1894, another human skeleton was unearthed at a higher level; and soon after again another.
All these interments belong to man at a period before the use of metals was known, and when the only tools employed were of bone and flint. The purpose of covering them with red oxide was to give to the bodies a fictitious appearance of life. The men were of a great size, tall and well built, taller indeed than are the natives of the Riviera at the present day; and the heads are well developed—the skulls contained plenty of brains, and there is nothing simian about the faces.
A little prehistoric museum has been built on a platform near the caves, where most of the relics found in them are preserved; but some are in the museum at Mentone itself.