wall that contains an early Romanesque doorway. The Polignacs seized on
the spike of rock and built on the summit a castle that could be
reached only by a flight of steps cut in the face of the rock. By
degrees the inhabitants have migrated from their caves to the neck of
land connecting the prong with the hill, and have built themselves
houses thereon. They have even abandoned their monolithic church and
erected in its place an unsightly modern building.

There are other cave-dwellings in the volcanic rocks of the Cevennes
and Auvergne, but the above account must suffice.

I will now say something about the Troglodyte dwellings in the
sandstone in Correze, in the neighbourhood of Brive, caves that have
been inhabited from the time of the man who was contemporary with the
mammoth, to this day. Some have, however, been abandoned comparatively
recently.

They do not run deep into the rock; usually they face the south or
south-west, and are sometimes in a series at the same level; sometimes
they form several storeys, which communicated with each other by
ladders that passed through holes cut in the floor of the upper storey,
or else by a narrow cornice, wide enough for one to walk on. Sometimes
this cornice has been abraded by the weather, and fallen away; in which
case these cave-dwellings can be reached only by a ladder. There are
caves in which notches cut in the rock show where beams had been
inserted, and struts to maintain them, so as to form a wooden balcony
for communication between the chambers, or between the dwellings of
neighbours.

The doorways into these habitations are usually cut so as to admit a