The history of the adults will hardly bear looking into. None of these
people have any fixed occupation, and it is difficult to discover how
they subsist. In fact, the life of every one of them is a problem. One
might have supposed that they maintained a precarious existence by
thieving or by begging, as they are far below the ordinary tramp; for
with the exception of perhaps two or three of them, these cave-dwellers
possess absolutely nothing, and know no trade whatever. They sleep on
dry leaves kept together by four pieces of wood, and their sole
covering consists of scraps of packing cloth. Sometimes they have not
even the framework for their beds, which they manufacture for the most
part out of old broken chairs discarded from the churches. A visitor
says: "In one of the caverns I entered there was but one of these
squalid and rude beds to accommodate five persons, of whom one was a
girl of seventeen, and two were boys of fourteen and fifteen. Their
kitchen battery consists exclusively of old metal cases of preserved
fruit or meats that they have picked up from the ashpits. The majority,
but by no means all, have got hold, somehow, of some old stoves or the
scraps of a stove that they have put together as best they could. They
have a well in common at the bottom of the hill, whence they draw water
in such utensils as they possess, and which they let down into the
water on a wooden crook. Every one has his crook as his own property,
and preserves it near him in the cavern. The majority of these
underground people have no clothes to speak of. Girls of fifteen and
big boys go about absolutely without any linen. The rest--perhaps three
or four--have only a few linen rags upon them. In the stifling
atmosphere of these cave-dwellings it is by no means rare to see big
children almost, if not absolutely, naked. I saw a great girl with a
wild shock of uncombed hair, wearing nothing but a very scanty shift.