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On the Beune, a tributary of the Vezere, is the hamlet of Grioteaux, planted on a terrace in a cave, the rock overhangs the houses. Above the cluster, inaccessible without a ladder, in the face of the cliff, is a chamber hewn out of the rock, and joist holes proclaiming that at one time a wooden gallery preceded it.
The hillsides above the Vezere are growing green again with vineyards, and again the juice of the grape is beginning to flow abundantly; but years must pass before it will be worthy of being put into the same cellar with the few bottles of the old wine which have been treasured up here and there by the grower, but which he thinks it a sacrilege to drink on occasions less solemn than marriages or christenings in the family.
Had it not been for other plans, I should have continued my journey southward from Cadouin as far as the Chateau de Biron, one of the most instructive relics of the past in Perigord, and have taken on my way Modieres, one of the English bastides which Edward I. farmed for ten years; but I made my way back to the Dordogne, with the intention of ascending the valley of its tributary the Vezere.
No trace of a stair remains; in fact no stair could have been cut in the face of a rock that overhangs as does this. Another very remarkable cliff-refuge is Le Peuch Saint Sour on the Vezere. It is not mentioned in any chronicle as having been a resort of the English in the Hundred Years' War, and we may accordingly conclude that it was a refuge for the inhabitants of the hamlet at its feet.
Since then, in the valley of the Vezere, Les Eyzies in the Department of Dordogne, has become a classic spot. On reaching the valley of the Vezere by the train from Perigueux, one is swung down from the plateau into a trough between steep scarps of chalk-rock that rise from 150 to 300 feet above the placid river.
At La Laugerie Basse, on the right bank of the Vezere, is a vast accumulation of fallen rocks, encumbering the ground for at least thirty-five feet in height under the overhanging cornice. The fallen matter consists of the disintegration of the projecting lip.
But the next year, their numbers being again largely increased, they resumed their forays with the result that the Sarladais marched to the valley of the Vezere and regularly besieged the Roque de Tayac. The struggle was marked with great ferocity on both sides.
The spring has come again, and I am now at Les Eyzies, in the valley of the Vezere: a paradise of exceptional richness to the scientific bone and flint grubber on account of the very marked predilection shown for it by the men of the Stone Age, polished and unpolished. It is about five in the morning, and the woods along the cliffs are just beginning to catch the pale fire of the rising sun.
It can be entered only from behind, by a very small oval opening, preceded by a gallery very narrow, and masked at the entrance by enormous rocks, and which could be barricaded by stout beams, hollows for the reception of which are visible. The other is at Soulier-de-Chasteaux on the Couze, an affluent of the Vezere. Here are two caverns excavated by the hand of man.
Evidence substantiating the thesis of Lyall had been accumulating, and the researches of Lartet and Christy in the Vezere valley, published in 1865-75, as Reliquiae Aquitanicae, conclusively proved that man in Perigord had been a naked savage, contemporary with the mammoth, the reindeer and the cave-bear, that he had not learned to domesticate animals, to sow fields, to make pots, and that he was entirely ignorant of the use of the metals.
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