Where a cliff stood up precipitous or overhanging, and in its face gaped caverns, those who sought refuge in time of danger naturally looked to them, and contrived means of reaching them, therein to ensconce their goods and secure their persons. They might have to contemplate the devastation of their fields, and their farms burning, from their eyries, but they knew that their persons were safe. There were various ways by which these caves could be reached; one was by cutting notches in the face of the cliff for fingers and toes, so that it could be climbed to from below, but not accessible to an enemy exposed to the thrust of pikes, and to stones being cast down upon him. Or else the notches were cut laterally from an accessible ledge, but if so, then this mode of approach was carefully guarded. A second method was by ladders, but as some of these caves are so high up that no single ladder could reach their mouths, a succession was contrived notched below and above into the rock where ledges either existed naturally or were contrived artificially, so as to enable the climber to step from one ladder to the next. In the event of danger the ladders could be withdrawn. A third method was by a windlass, rope and basket, and this was employed where the ascent by finger and toe notches was peculiarly perilous, for the conveyance of goods or of children and old people. But cattle had also to be saved from the depredators, and in some of the cliff refuges are stables for horses and cowstalls, with mangers and silos; places also where the windlass was fixed and there the sharp edge of the rock has been smoothed to an easy slope to facilitate the landing of the beasts, that were hauled up by bands placed under their bellies. Provision was also made for the baking of bread and the storage of water, this latter in the same way as already described in the account of the contrivances for permanent rock- dwellings. These cliff refuges can have been had recourse to only on emergencies, on account of their inaccessibility.
At Cazelles in the commune of Sireuil (Dordogne) is a cliff 1200 feet long, and about 150 feet high. It has been worn into a deep furrow some twenty or thirty feet from the top, horizontal and running its entire length. The whole cliff overhangs its base. The entire groove has been occupied as a refuge, and there have been excavations in the back of the groove for additional chambers. In front, moreover, there must have been a balcony of wood, sustained by beams and props. In three places the edge of the terrace has been cut through for the convenience of hauling up cattle and farm produce. At the time when this was in use there was a hamlet at the foot of the cliff, as is shown by the furrows cut in the rock into which the tile roofing was let, and notches for the reception of the roof timbers.
No trace of a stair remains; in fact no stair could have been cut in the face of a rock that overhangs as does this. Another very remarkable cliff-refuge is Le Peuch Saint Sour on the Vézère. It is not mentioned in any chronicle as having been a resort of the English in the Hundred Years' War, and we may accordingly conclude that it was a refuge for the inhabitants of the hamlet at its feet.
[Illustration: LA ROCHE GAGEAC. A town and castles on the Dordogne, never captured by the English, but afterwards sacked and ruined by the Huguenots.]
[Illustration: LE PEUCH S. SOUR. A series of refuges in the face of the cliff. Originally a place of retreat of S. Sour, a hermit.]
S. Sorus or Sour was a hermit, born about the year 500; he set off with two companions, Amandus and Cyprian, to find a desert place where he might take up his abode. I will quote from the Latin life. "All at once in their wanderings they arrived at a place in the midst of vast forests, and dens of wild beasts, a place so barren and abrupt, of access so difficult, that surely no one had ever hitherto ventured to reach it either to dwell there, or for pleasure, even to visit it for curiosity. A rock very lofty furnished him above with a shelter that sufficed; out of the flanks of the rock issued a spring and watered the little valley that was on the other side surrounded by the Vézère."
I think that it was in the Peuch S. Sour that the hermit settled, though afterwards through the favour of King Gontram he moved to lands granted him at Terrasson. And now for a story. Here he resolved to live alone, and here he parted with his companions. But before they separated, "Let us have a love feast together," said he. But he had with him only a bit of fat bacon. He divided it into three parts, and gave a share to each of his companions. Now it was Lent, and one of them was scandalized at the idea of eating bacon in Lent, so he put the bit of meat into his bosom, where it was at once transformed into a serpent, which enwrapped him in its coils. Terrified, he screamed to Sour to deliver him, which the hermit did, and the monster was at once resolved into a bit of bacon. "Eat it," said the hermit, "and remember that Charity is above all rules."
The description of the place so well accords with the Peuch that bears his name, that I cannot doubt but that Sour occupied for some years the cave high up in the cliff, and only to be reached by crawling to it sideways, holding on to the rock by fingers and toes. But afterwards it was greatly enlarged to serve as a place of retreat by the peasants of the hamlet below. It consists of three groups of chambers cut in the rock, one reached by a very long, forty-round ladder, when a chamber is entered which has a hole in the roof through which, by another ladder, one can mount to a whole series of chambers communicating one with another. The face of some of these was originally walled up. A second group is now inaccessible. A third is reached by climbing along the face of the cliff, with fingers and toes placed in niches cut in the cleft to receive them.
[Illustration: Beginning of a Gallery.]
[Illustration: The Pick employed.]