The vast expanse of chalk that underlies southern England, Flanders and northern France is easily worked, yet firm enough not to fall in, or crack away, when ordinary precautions are taken by the miner, and one might almost say that wherever it is exposed in river cuttings living rooms have been dug into the cliffs. Of ten these are so numerous and deep, that an underground village exists. Thus near Mon take, in the department of Loir et Cher, about ISO miles south of Paris, is the little city of Trdo, at the base of a cliff of chalk. °The whole height," a recent visitor writes, "is like a sponge, perforated with passages giving access to halls, some of which are circular, and into stone chambers; and most of the homes are wholly or in part underground. The caves that are in habited are staged one above another, some reached by stairs that are little better than ladders, and the subterranean passages running from them form a labyrinth within the bokiels of the hill, and run in superposed storeys .. . The town ... is partly built at the foot of the bluff, but very few houses are without exca vated chambers, store places, or stables. The café looks ordinary enough, but enter, and you find yourself in a The valley of the Loir, a northern tributary of the Loire at Angers, abounds in such rock villages, and they occur in many other places in France, Spain and northern Italy. In the department of Maine et Loire, whole vil lages are underground. A man may utilize valuable hillside ground for a vineyard, by building walls to retain level terraces. He quarries the necessary stones from the hill and fences his property. Then for his own dwelling he cuts out chambers in the sides of his quarry, leaving a thin front wall with windows and doorways, and bores a chimney up to the sur face. Near Loudon the dry moat of a mediaeval castle, cut into the rock, is alive with people inhabiting tenements dug into its sides. It is true that in most cases the families living in such quarters are poor and mean — sometimes degraded; but a great many are the homes of families of honest, working folks; are decently furnished, and ornamented outwardly by ledge gardens, hanging vines and neatly curtained windows; or regular house fronts may be erected before the caves, as is well known to tourists of the "chateau country" about Tours.
Caves, natural and artificial, have been and are still valued elsewhere in the Eastern world. Villages like those described above exist in some parts of Italy, in Sicily, in Egypt and es pecially in Syria. Southeast of Damascus, and not far from Palmyra, is Edrei, the capital of the Amoritish King Og, ruler of Bashan, which was captured by the Israelites in the course of their conquest of Canaan. It was an under ground city cut out of solid rock, which was explored some years ago by Wetzstein, who was astonished at its extent. After threading a long, downward entrance-passage he found himself in a broad street, with dwellings on each side of comfortable height and width. "The temperature was mild, the air free from unpleasant odors, and I felt not the smallest difficulty in breathing. Further along there were several cross streets, and my guide called my attention to a hole in the ceiling for air, like three others which I afterward saw, now closed from above. Soon after we came to a
market place, where for a long distance on both sides of the pretty broad street, were numerous shops in the walls, exactly in the style of the shops seen in Syrian cities. After a while we turned into a side street where a great hall, whose roof was supported by four pillars, attracted my attention. The roof, a ceil ing, was formed of a single slab of jasper, per fectly smooth and of immense size.* In this region, too, lies Petra, hidden in a gorge of savage grandeur, and often visited by tourists. It also is an excavated city, where temples with their colonnades and façades are let into the red cliff, superimposed one above another. ((From the earliest recorded times the inhabitants of the district were 'Horim,' that is to say Troglodytes, whose first rude grottoes, shapeless caverns hollowed out of the hillside, have been transformed to architectural galleries decorated with statues and bas-reliefs.* Many other most curious examples of the present occupation of cave-dwellings in the East and in northern China might be cited, es pecially where banks and steep hillsides of the stiff earth called loess have been tunneled into, and are occupied by hundreds of dwelling places in which families now live in health and con tentment.
Vast numbers of caverns, with evidences of former domestic occupation, are to be seen also in the mountains about the headwaters of the Yangtse Kiang (Blue River) in southwestern China. They are now left empty, or used oo casionally only as ((refugees)); but in Kan-Su and Shen-Si precisely similar caverns are ex cavated in the hillside, and even to-day they are favorite dwellings of the people. Africa is not in general a cavernous region, because of its geology; but in south central Africa, the Bush men were found dwelling to a considerable extent under ground. Doman (Trans. S. Afri can Philos. Soc. 1909) writing of such inhabited caves in Basutoland says they were the rallying points of the various clans; and Stow reports that those inhabited by the head chiefs were adorned by paintings of totemic animals and the like.
Caves as Refuges.— Caverns and under ground retreats, natural and artificial, ancient and modern, have always been resorted to ks hiding places, not only by individuals fleeing from persecution, or avoiding legal punish ment, or for criminal concealment (as by smug glers and robbers), but by great companies of people with their goods, in times of war or other social disasters. The early history of the Jews as given in the Bible has frequent refer ences to this resort, as when Ahab persecuted the prophets and Obadiah hid them by fifties in a cave; and as when Joshua defeated the Amorites and their five kings hid themselves in the cave at Malckedah. The same sort of thing has occurred wherever men fought in a cavernous region from the beginning of humanity to the battles in northern France in 1917, where whole regiments were concealed in subterranean chambers north of the Aisne. Nowhere was the value of such means of safety to a harassed population better illustrated than in the civil wars that have raged in south western China and in the tribal conflicts and blood-feuds of Afghanistan.