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Entranced by her song and the potency of her glances, they moved forward until they encircled the hill of waters. Then, with hiss and roar, the river fell back to its level, submerging the whole tribe. The music that haunts the bay, rising through the water when the moon is out, is the sound of their revels in the caves below dusky Tannhausers of a southern Venusberg.
Perhaps the greatest interest was the work upon a series of caves in the river-bank, behind the Intelligence Office. They are square-topped, with straight sides, cut clean into the hard, sandy cliff. The Light Horse have made them for themselves and their ammunition. On the opposite side the Archdeacon has hollowed out a noble, ecclesiastical burrow.
Besides the cedar-trees, there were sugar-maples and white birches; and the beautiful rock ferns grew all over the ledges in high waving tufts, almost as luxuriantly as if they were in the tropics; so that the spot, wild and fierce as it was, had great beauty. Many of the fugitive slaves had built themselves huts here: some lived in the caves.
We had plenty of variety in the matter of work; one part of the grotto was intended for Simpson's magnetic work, and this was the illuminated section. Whenever people visited the ice caves we got them to do a bit of picking and hewing; even roping in Captain Scott, who did a healthy half-hour's work when he came along our way.
In the course of the last year or two, I have mentioned these glacières now and then in England, and no one has seemed to know anything about them; so I determined, in the spring of 1864, to spend a part of the summer in examining the three we had already seen or heard of, and discovering, if possible, the existence of similar caves.
But such evidence as there is would lead us to suppose that primitive man was solitary, not social. The anthropoid apes are not social, but live in families, and are very unprogressive. On the other hand, the earliest remains of prehistoric man give no indication of social life. Fire-places, workshops, caves, etc., enter the story in a later phase. * The point will be more fully discussed later.
The former may have been excavated by smugglers. An interesting account of the excavation of two caves at Archerfield, in Haddingtonshire, is given in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland for 1909.
In the far recesses of those mountains were almost inaccessible caves in which the natives laid their dead, and where one found still their moldering skeletons. M. Brault touched my shoulder. "Rumor has it that the body of Pomaré the Fifth is there," he said; "that it was taken secretly from the tomb you have seen near Papeete, and carried here at night.
They looked at the dark hull which was lying motionless upon the water. 'Duncan rode over to the caves last night to tell Neil to keep out of sight while the Heroic is here, said Allan. 'The only fear is if the men should try exploring with torches. There are openings from the caves on to the moors, but if the island is swarming with men it wouldn't be much good trying to escape by them.
"I know not," answered the old man, struggling with unexpressed emotion; "yet think not of me, my child, I shall be free, be safe, untouched by aught of personal ill, while young and lovely ones, for whom it would be bliss to die, are crushed and bleeding in their spring; the mountains, and rocks, and woods, yet unstained with blood, call on me to return, and be at rest within their caves.
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