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Updated: May 19, 2025
How had the animals been able to penetrate this well? It is difficult to admit that it was through the aperture that I have mentioned. I endeavored to ascertain whether there was not another communication with the Gargas grotto, and had the satisfaction of finding a fissure that ended in the cave, and that probably was wider at the epoch at which the place served as a lair for the bear and hyena.
After extracting the bones from the lower pocket, and when no more clay remained, we successively dug out the upper ones and threw the earth to the bottom of the well. On the 20th of December, 1884, my excavating was finished. To-day the Oubliettes of Gargas are obstructed with the clay that it was impossible to carry elsewhere. The pockets contained nearly entire skeletons of these species.
This latter was blasted out about thirty years ago. Upon following the direction of the great crevices, we reach a small chamber, wherein are found the Oubliettes of Gargas a vertical well 65 feet feet in depth. Such is the general configuration of the grotto. In 1865 Dr. Garrigou and Mr. De Chastaignier visited the grotto, and were the first to make excavations therein.
About twenty-seven years ago, on the 19th of September, 1846, two children belonging to the hamlet of Abladens the one a girl of fourteen, the other a boy of twelve years old came down from the lofty pasturage of Mont Gargas, where they had been herding cattle, and told the following strange story.
After this we reach the Hall of Crevices, 80 feet square, and this leads to the great Hall of Gargas, which is about 328 feet in length by 80, 98, and 105 in width. In certain places enormous fissures in the vault rise to a great height. Some of these, shaped like great inverted funnels, are more than 60 yards in length. The grotto terminates in the Creeping Hall.
I invite you to accompany me in the spirit first of all to the cave of Gargas near Aventiron, under the shadow of the Pic du Midi in the High Pyrenees. Half-way up a hill, in the midst of a wilderness of rocky fragments, the relics of the ice-age, is a smallish hole, down which we clamber into a spacious but low-roofed grotto, stretching back five hundred feet or so into infinite darkness.
The deposit was from 26 to 32 feet square and from 2 inches to 5 feet deep, and rested upon a bed of broken stones above the stalagmite. At the extremity of the grotto there is a well with vertical sides which is no less than 65 feet in depth. It is called the Gargas Oubilettes. Mr.
Men also he shot, strangled, or stabbed, and dragged to his lair, there to devour their carcases. For three years this monster terrorized the countryside. The number of his victims was innumerable. As last he was caught and broken on the wheel in December 1782. There is no evidence that the naked prehistoric men who had inhabited the cave of Gargas were cannibals.
The grotto of Gargas is located in Mount Tibiran about three hundred yards above the level of the valley, and about two miles southeast of the village of Aventignan. Access to it is easy, since a road made by Mr. Borderes in 1884 allows carriages to reach its entrance.
At Gargas, near Montzejeau, in Hautes Pyrenees, is a prehistoric cavern of considerable extent. In it have been found sealed up in stalagmite the remains of primitive man.
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