[ILLUSTRATION: CHATEAU DES ANGLAIS, AUTOIRE. Reached by a sharp
scramble up a steep, and then by a ledge in a precipice. Some chambers
are scooped out of the rock. When the English were besieged, they
escaped by a goat-path, to a point whence hung a rope from a tree
above, and up this they swarmed.]

Below Conduche, where the Cele enters the Lot, the road runs under
tremendous precipices of orange and grey limestone, in which the track
has been cut; and the road would be totally blocked by a huge buttress
split down the middle had not a tunnel for it been cut. As the Roman
road ran this way, the original tunnel was made by the Masters of the
World, but it has been widened of late years. Commanding the road and
the tunnel, planted in the cleft of the rock, is a castellated
structure, that also owes its origin to the captains who fortified the
Cele caves.

None could pass up or down the road without being spied and arrested,
and made to pay toll by the garrison of this fort. [Footnote: So early
as the eleventh or twelfth century there was not a small river, as the
Cele and the Aveyron, on which tolls were not levied.]

The Cahors Chronicle says of this period: "Deinde fuit in praesenti
patria mala guerra. Anglicis et Gallis hinc inde repraedentibus, unde
evenit victualium omnium maxima caristia. Nullus civis Caturci villam
exire erat ausus, omnia enim per injustitiam regebatur." If the
merchants and provision wains for Cahors were not robbed at the Defile
des Anglais, they were subjected to toll. The interior of the chasm
reveals a whole labyrinth of passages and vaults dug out in the heart
of the calcareous rock. The chambers had openings as windows looking