and other Human Studies," Lond. 1910, p. 137 _et seq_.]




CHAPTER III

SOUTERRAINS


In the year 1866 the Prussian Army of the Elbe broke into Bohemia, when
it was found that the inhabitants of a certain district had vanished
along with their cattle and goods, leaving behind empty houses and
stables. It had been the same during the Thirty Years' War, and again
in the Seven Years' War, when the invaders found not a living soul, and
contented themselves with destroying the crops and burning the villages
and farms. Even the Government officials had disappeared. Whither had
they gone? Into the rock labyrinths of Adersbach and Wickelsdorf, each
accessible only through a single gap closed by a door. The mountain of
what the Germans call Quadersandstein is four miles long by two broad,
and was at one time an elevated plateau, but is now torn into gullies,
forming a tangled skein of ravines, wherein a visitor without a guide
might easily lose himself. The existence of this labyrinth was unknown
save to the peasants till the year 1824, when a forest fire revealed
it, but for some time it remained unexplored. [Footnote: It had indeed
been mentioned by Dr. Kausch in his _Nachrichten ueber Boehmen_,
1794; but he lamented its inaccessibility.]

As Adersbach and Wickelsdorf lie on the frontier of Bohemia and
Silesia, the existence of this region of cliffs and natural refuges had