United States or Sint Maarten ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
There is no doubt that it is the caves of the south of France which have yielded the most interesting objects; needles with drilled eyes, and barbed arrows have been picked up in considerable numbers at Eyzies, Laugerie-Basse, at Bruniquel, Massat, and in the Madeleine Cave. Dr. Garrigou mentions some rein deer or roebuck antlers found in Ariege caves, which had been made into regular stilettos.
For the steps here are nearly always three in number between the plain and the main chain, and each is entered by a regular gate of rock. So it is in the valley of the Ariege, and so it is in that of the Aston, and so it is in every other valley until you get to the far end where live the cleanly but incomprehensible Basques.
Above the swift flowing Ariège in their superb setting of mountain and forest are the towers and parapets of the old château, in itself enough to make the name and fame of any city.... The actual age of the monument covers many epochs.
The later census returns show a progressive diminution in the population of the departments of the Lower Alps, the Isere, Drome, Ariege, the Upper and the Lower Pyrenees, Lozere, the Ardennes, Doubs, the Vosges, and, in short, in all the provinces formerly remarkable for their forests. The augmentation, however, was wholly in the provinces of the plains, where all the principal cities are found.
We also hear of pile dwellings in the Jura Mountains, in the Pyrenean valleys of Haute-Garonne, Ariege, and Aude, as well as in those of the Eastern Pyrenees. In the department of Landes, which on one side joins the plateau of Lannemezan, and on the other the lofty plains of Bearn, are many marshy depressions, where have been found numbers of piles, with charred wood and fragments of pottery.
In another cave, that of Massat, in the department of Ariege, which M. Lartet ascribes to the period of the aurochs, a quadruped which survived the reindeer in the south of France, there are bone instruments of a still more advanced state of the arts, as, for example, barbed arrows with a small canal in each, believed to have served for the insertion of poison; also a needle of bird's bone, finely shaped, with an eye or perforation at one end, and a stag's horn, on which is carved a representation of a bear's head, and a hole at one end as if for suspending it.
In 412 there was another influx of barbarians, this time Visigoths; their king Walla made Toulouse his capital, and gave over two-thirds of the land to his followers. After the battle of Voulon, in 507, Clovis took possession of Toulouse. In 715 the Saracens poured through the gaps in the Pyrenees, occupied the basin of the Ariege, and destroyed the city of Couserans.
In the persecution of the Albigenses at the instigation of Pope Innocent III. the unfortunate heretics fled to the caves, but were hunted, or smoked out and massacred by the Papal emissaries. Nevertheless, a good many escaped, and in 1325, when John XXII. was reigning in Avignon, he ordered a fresh battu of heretics. A great number fled to the cave of Lombrive near Ussat in Ariege.
The vast grotto of Lombrive in Ariege has been already mentioned. It became a den of a band of murderous brigands at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Surtshellir in Iceland has attracted a great deal of attention, perhaps because it is so different from other caves, being formed in the lava. Its origin is very easily explained.
In the Ariege we find an association of eight separate communes for the common culture of their lands, which they have put together; syndicates for free medical aid have been formed in 172 communes out of 337 in the same department; associations of consumers arise in connection with the syndicates; and so on.
Word Of The Day