The same arrangements for safety from massacre and robbery were made farther north; and we are assured by a recent historian that *it may safely be said that there is scarcely a village between Arras and Amiens and between Roye and the sea, betwixt the courses of the Somme and Authie, that was not provided with these underground refuges.* One the how large a part they have played in the great war that began there in 1914. It is evident that the and other subterranean de fenses that held so large a place in the cam paigns that followed were not as novel devices as the surprised Western world considered them.
Caves as Places of Religious Worship.— Whether or not the prehistoric peoples, the cave-men, decorated their cabins with religious intent, or whether anything in the way of wor ship was connected with them, is a matter on which archaeologists are undecided. Primitive man was a worshipper of nature, in the sense that he feared and tried to conciliate the powerful unseen agencies that he believed filled the universe. Supreme among the natural mani festations was the sun, and, as opposed to its brightness, the powers of evil worked in and were represented by darkness. Hence caves, unlighted, deep and mysterious, were logically regarded as abodes of malignant spirits, and perhaps as opening to the dark and horrid underworld. *The Zulus,* says Tylor, ((can show the holes where one can descend by a cavern into the underworld of the dead, an idea well-known in the classic lake Avernus, and which has lasted on to our own day id Saint Patrick's Purgatory in Lough Dearg [Ireland.]* Such holes might call for pro pitiatory offerings, but would not become temples of uplifting worship. In various parts of the world, however, grottoes were used for the disposal of the dead, and in Egypt this be came a cult of tremendous influence on the people, who, as they advanced, constructed elaborate, rock-cut tombs. Their growing be lief in the immortality of the soul — nowhere more thoroughly realized—led to ceremonials of remembrance and ancestor-worship that de veloped into a philosophy that led to the erec tion of temples, and some of these temples were carved out of solid rock, with an ornate, architectural entrance (see EGYPT). The same sequence of religious philosophy seems to have occurred in the valley of the Euphrates as in that of the Nile. The form of their ancient temples verifies the tradition of the Chaldees that they were evolved from tombs.
The wonderful cave temples of India, es pecially those of Elephanta Island, near Bom bay, are well known, or may be studied in the elaborate book of India,' by Ferguson and Burgess. Those of Elephanta are Hindu (Sivaistic), but more than 500 excavations made in ancient times by Bud dhists for the purposes of worship are known in northwest India. Buddhist temples in caves, many of them still visited on holy days by priests and devotees, abound in southwestern China — a fact little known even to the Chinese themselves; most of them are natural grottoes, more or less modified for their purpose, and not all can be regarded as Buddhistic. The latest explorer of them is Vicomte D'011one, who speaks as follows of them, as seen in the moun tains near the head of the Blue River (Yang tze) in his book In Forbidden China:' *Sometimes a population of statues slumbers and dreams in the mystery of these caverns, and the visitor experiences a feeling of re ligious awe as the torchlight shows their forms emerging from the shadow, like the very spirits of the earth."' A new and different impulse toward the utilizing of natural caves, and the construction of underground places of worship was given by the advent of Christianity and the conse quent persecution of its early followers by the Romans, who regarded the sect not only as heretical but as politically dangerous. The faithful victims of this persecution were there fore compelled to seek everywhere secret places for their meetings. Their doctrine of the res urrection of the body, which was new in Rome, required that attention be paid to its proper bestowal after death, and this led, as long be fore it•had done in Egypt, to elaborate tombs. Hence those sacred rock-cut tombs still revered in Palestine; and hence also the vast cata combs (q.v.) in the suburbs of Rome and of many other Italian cities. Within these cata combs were not only funereal chapels but regu lar churches. The system of hermitage, which became so prevalent in the early centuries of our era throughout North Africa and Asia Minor, sanctified many caves and semi-grot toes once inhabited by anchorites, and led to regular worship in them. Says Dean Stanley (Sinai and Palestine' (London 1856): *The moment that the religion of Palestine fell into the hands of Europeans it is hardly too much to say that as far as sacred traditions are con cerned it became a religion of caves. .