this den. Of the Roc de Tayac, in and against which this paradisaical
hotel is plastered, I shall have more to say in another chapter.

The first men who settled in this favoured valley under shelters open
to the blaze of the sun, in a soft and pleasant climate, where the air
when not in proximity to men, is scented with mint, marjoram and
juniper, where with little trouble a salmon might be harpooned, must
have multiplied enormously--for every overhanging rock, every cavern,
even every fallen block of stone, has been utilised as a habitation.
Where a block has fallen, the prehistoric men scratched the earth away
from beneath it, and couched in the trench. The ground by the river
when turned up is black with the charcoal from their fires. A very
little research will reward the visitor with a pocketful of flint
knives and scrapers. And this is what is found not only on the main
artery, but on all the lateral veins of water--wherever the cretaceous
rocks project and invite to take shelter under them. Since the
researches of Lartet and Christy, it has been known as an established
fact that these savages were indued with rare artistic skill. Their
delineations with a flint point on ivory and bone, of the mammoth,
reindeer, and horse, are so masterly that these men stand forth as the
spiritual ancestors of Landseer and Rosa Bonheur. And what is also
remarkable is that the race which succeeded, that which discovered the
use of metal, was devoid of the artistic sense, and their attempts at
delineation are like the scribbling of an infant.

Of late years fresh discoveries have been made, revealing the fact that
the Paleolithic men were able to paint as well as to engrave. In Les
Combarelles and at Font-de-Gaume, far in the depths, where no light
reaches, the walls have been found turned into a veritable picture-
gallery. In the latter are twenty-four paintings; in the former forty-