The Cave of Adullam—Mahomet in the Cave of Thaur—The Cave of Longara—The Cave of Egg—The Caves of Rathlin—The Cave of Yeermalik—The Caves of Granada—Aben Aboo, the Morisco king—The Caves of Gortyna and Melidoni—Atrocities of French Warfare in Algeria—The Caves of the Dahra—The Cave of Shelas—St. Arnaud.

In times of war or persecution, caverns have often served as places of concealment. It was in the cave of Adullam that David hid himself to escape from the fury of Saul; and on the flight from Mecca to Medina, Mahomet and his disciple Abu Bekr took refuge in a cave in Mount Thaur. They left Mecca while it was yet dark, making their way on foot by the light of the stars, and the day dawned as they found themselves at the foot of the hill, about an hour’s distance from the holy city. Scarcely were they within the cave when they heard the sound of pursuit. Abu Bekr, though a brave man, quaked with fear. ‘Our pursuers,’ said he, ‘are many, and we are but two.’ ‘Nay,’ replied Mahomet, ‘there is a third: God is with us!’

And here the Moslem writers relate a miracle dear to the minds of true believers. By the time, say they, that his pursuers, the Koreishites, reached the mouth of the cave, an acacia-tree had sprung up before it, in the spreading branches of which a pigeon had made its nest and laid its eggs, and over the whole a spider had woven its web. When the Koreishites beheld these signs of undisturbed quiet, they concluded that no one could recently have entered the cavern, so they turned away and pursued their search in another direction.

But caverns have not always proved safe places of refuge, and a barbarous enemy has often used them for the destruction of those who there vainly sought safety. Thus, in Palestine, the Jews, who hid themselves with their wives and children in deep caverns hollowed in the flanks of a precipitous mountain, could not escape the satellites of Herod, who, let down from above in large baskets or tubs, put these defenceless fugitives to the sword. During the Gallic war CÆsar ordered his lieutenant Crassus to wall up the mouths of the caves in which the inhabitants of Aquitaine had sought a refuge, and many of them were thus immured alive.

In the year 1510, when the French army, on its retreat from Italy, was traversing the defiles of Piedmont, the rearguard, commanded by the famous Chevalier Bayard, the good knight ‘without fear or reproach,’ having halted at Longara, the mercenaries, who formed a considerable part of his troops, spread over the country, pillaging and destroying wherever they went.

To escape from these savage bands, the nobles of the district persuaded about two thousand of the peasantry to accompany them, with their families and an abundant supply of provisions, into the Cave of Longara, which forms a vast though low vaulted hall, about 1,200 feet long and 300 feet broad, but with an entrance so narrow that only a single person can pass at a time. The mercenaries, having discovered the secret of the cave, rushed to the spot, eager for pillage. The unfortunate refugees vainly strove to soften the hearts of these barbarians, but, finding all supplications vain, they took courage from despair, and, favoured by the natural strength of the cave, repelled the attack of the first banditti who attempted to force an entrance.

The ruffians now returned to the charge in greater numbers; but being still unable to accomplish their object, they formed the diabolical plan of setting fire to a heap of hay, straw, and greenwood, which they piled up before the mouth of the grotto. The smoke penetrated into the cave and in a short time the two thousand wretches it contained—mostly women and children—were suffocated. Bayard, enraged at this barbarous act, which sullied his own honour, ordered the ringleaders to be seized and hanged before the entrance of the cave.

While these malefactors were in the hands of the executioner, a lad of fourteen, the only survivor of the catastrophe, was seen to crawl out of the grotto. Bayard ordered every aid to be rendered him which his state required, and could not refrain from tears while listening to his lamentable tale. The boy related that when the smoke began to spread in the cavern, the nobles, resolving to die at least like soldiers, wanted to sally forth, sword in hand, but were prevented by the peasants, who fell upon them and disarmed them, saying, ‘You have led us hither, and here with us you shall die!’ Thus, a few moments before a common doom was to destroy both nobles and serfs, a horrible strife had arisen between them in the darkness of the cave.

‘And thou, my friend,’ asked Bayard, ‘by what miracle hast thou escaped death?’ ‘I had remarked,’ answered the lad, ‘a feeble ray of daylight in a corner of the grotto, and applied my mouth to the crevice through which it passed. I soon fainted, but this small portion of fresh air preserved my life. When I recovered my senses, I remembered all that had passed, but I was alone, and it took me a long time to crawl out of the grotto.’ ‘All thy companions,’ answered Bayard, ‘have been buried, by my orders, in consecrated ground; and behold! there hang their assassins!’

Unfortunately the history of our land is tarnished with similar deeds of atrocity.

A cave in the Isle of Egg, one of the Hebrides, has a very narrow entrance, through which one can hardly creep on knees and hands, but it rises steep and lofty within, and runs into the bowels of the rock to the depth of 255 measured feet. The rude and stony bottom of this cave is strewed with the bones of men, women, and children, the sad relics of the ancient inhabitants of the island, 200 in number, of whose destruction the following story is related. ‘The Macdonalds, of the Isle of Egg, a people dependent on Clanranald, had done some injury to the Laird of Macleod. The tradition of the isle says that it was by a personal attack on the chieftain, in which his back was broken; but that of the other isles bears that the injury was offered to two or three of the Macleods, who, landing upon Egg, and behaving insolently towards the islanders, were bound hand and foot, and turned adrift in a boat, which the winds and waves safely conducted to Skye. To avenge the offence given, Macleod sailed with such a body of men as rendered resistance hopeless. The natives, fearing his vengeance, concealed themselves in the cavern; and, after strict search, the Macleods went on board their galleys, after doing what mischief they could, concluding the inhabitants had left the isle. But next morning they espied from their vessels a man upon the island, and, immediately landing again, they traced his retreat, by means of a light snow on the ground, to the cavern. Macleod then summoned the subterraneous garrison, and demanded that the inhabitants who had offended him should be delivered up. This was peremptorily refused. The chieftain thereupon caused his people to divert the course of a rill of water, which, falling over the mouth of the cave, would have prevented his purposed vengeance. He then kindled at the entrance of the cavern a huge fire, and maintained it until all within were destroyed by suffocation.’^[22]

In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, a no less horrible deed occurred during the campaign of Essex against the Irish rebels. When the English forces entered Antrim, the Scots of that county had sent their wives and children, their aged and their sick, to the island of Rathlin for safety. Sir John Norris was directed by the Earl to cross over and kill all that he could find. The run up the Antrim coast was rapidly and quietly accomplished. Before an alarm could be given the English had landed close to the church which bears Columba’s name. The castle was taken by storm, and every soul in it—about two hundred—put to the sword. It was then discovered that the greater part of the fugitives, chiefly mothers and their little ones, were hidden in the caves about the shores. ‘There was no remorse,’ says Froude, ‘not even the faintest shadow of perception that the occasion called for it. They were hunted out as if they had been seals or otters, and all destroyed.’

When the barbarian Genghis Khan invaded Koondooz in Central Asia, 700 men took refuge, with their wives and families, in the cave of Yeermalik, and defended themselves so valiantly that, after trying in vain to destroy them by fire, the invader built them in with huge natural blocks of stone, and left them to die of hunger. In the year 1840, the cave was visited by Captain Burslem and Lieutenant Sturt, probably the only Europeans that ever entered its sepulchral recesses, as the people in the neighbourhood believe it to be the abode of Sheitan (the devil), and are as reluctant to guide a stranger as to explore it themselves. The entrance is halfway up a hill, and is fifty feet high, with about the same breadth. Not far from the entrance the travellers found a passage between two jagged rocks, possibly the remains of Genghis Khan’s fatal wall, so narrow that they had some difficulty in squeezing through, and then before long came to a drop of sixteen feet, down which they were lowered by ropes. Here they left two men to haul them up on their return, and bade farewell to the light of day. The narrow path, which led by the edge of a black abyss, sometimes over a flooring of smooth ice for a few feet, widened gradually till they reached a damp and dripping hall, so vast in size that the light of their torches did not enable them to form any idea of its size. In this colossal hall, or rather tomb, they found the remains of the victims of Genghis Khan: hundreds of skeletons in a perfectly undisturbed state—one, for instance, still holding the skeletons of two infants in its long arms—while some of the bodies had been preserved, and lay shrivelled, like the mummies reposing in the sepulchral vault of the Great St. Bernard.

In the dark history of Philip II. of Spain, one of the darkest passages is that of the rebellion and final destruction of the Moors of Granada. Driven to despair by an intolerable tyranny, the unfortunate people at length rose in arms against their oppressors; but all their bravery, aided by the natural strength of their mountain fastnesses, failed to defend them against the superior arms of their pitiless enemy. Defeated in every encounter, driven from every stronghold, thousands perished by famine or the sword, and those who submitted were either condemned to a cruel death or exiled from their native soil. Many were driven to seek a refuge in the caves of the Alpujarras, south-east of Granada, and of the bold sierras that stretch along the southern shores of Spain. Their pursuers followed up the chase with the fierce glee of the hunter tracking the wild beast of the forest to his lair. There they were huddled together, one or two hundred frequently in the same cavern. It was not easy to detect the hiding-place amidst the rocks and thickets which covered up and concealed the entrance. But when it was detected, it was no difficult matter to destroy the inmates. The green bushes furnished the material for a smouldering fire, and those within were soon suffocated by the smoke, or, rushing out, threw themselves on the mercy of their pursuers. Some were butchered on the spot; others were sent to the gibbet or the galleys; while the greater part, with a fate scarcely less terrible, were given up as the booty of the soldiers, and sold into slavery.

Aben Aboo, the last chief of the insurgents, who had hitherto eluded every attempt to seize him, but whose capture was of more importance than that of any other of his nation, had a narrow escape in one of these caverns not far from Berchal, where he lay hid with a wife and two of his daughters. The women were suffocated, with about seventy other persons; but the Morisco chief succeeded in making his escape through an aperture at the further end, which was unknown to his enemies.

Unfortunately, the little king of the Alpujarras, as he was contemptuously called by the Spaniards, was soon after killed in another cavern by a traitor’s hand, and with him fell the last hope of the Moriscos. His corpse, set astride on a mule, and supported erect in the saddle by a wooden frame, concealed beneath ample robes, was led in triumphal procession through the streets of Granada, and then decapitated. The body was given to the rabble, who, after dragging it through the streets with scoffs and imprecations, committed it to the flames, while the head, inclosed in a cage, was set up over the gate which opened on the Alpujarras. There it remained for many a year, no one venturing to remove it, for on the cage was inscribed, ‘This is the head of the traitor Aben Aboo. Let no one take it down, under pain of death.’

The neighbourhood of Gortyna, in the island of Crete, has become celebrated in modern times for a mountain-labyrinth, with numerous and intricate passages, which exists in a valley near it, and in which the myth of the DÆdalean labyrinth was probably localised. During the revolutionary war against the Turkish yoke (1822–1828) the Christian inhabitants of the adjacent villages, for months together, lived in this cavern, merely sallying out by day to till their lands, or to gather their crops, when it was safe to do so. Though the dark recesses of the cavern were not very inviting abodes for human beings for any long period, yet the sense of safety gave it, doubtless, a peculiar charm; for no one could approach within range of the numerous muskets pointed from masked loopholes at its entrance, without being immediately shot down; nor could either fire or smoke suffocate or dislodge its inmates, as the entrance is in the side of a steep hill, 500 or 600 feet above the bed of the wild valley in which it is situated, and thus is safe from attack in every direction. History as well as tradition states that, in all troubled times in Crete, the labyrinth of Gortyna has been the retreat of the inhabitants of the neighbourhood; but when Captain Spratt visited it in 1852, its only inhabitants were bats, who, by their mode of hooking on to each other, were hanging from the ceiling like clusters of bees. Under good native guides, he spent nearly two hours in threading its tortuous passages, which turn in so many ways and have so many branches as to justify the conclusion that a master hand must have directed the excavation. The mark of the tool is seen upon every side of the avenues and chambers, indicative of its artificial character.

Less fortunate than their brethren of Gortyna were the unfortunate Cretans who, during the same war, took refuge in the cave of Melidoni. In 1822, when Hussein Bey marched against the neighbouring village, the inhabitants, to the number of three hundred, repaired to the cave, taking with them their valuables and provisions sufficient for six months. The entrance is so narrow and steep that they were perfectly secured against an attack, and the Turks in their first attempt lost twenty-five men. Finding that they refused submission on any terms, Hussein Bey ordered a quantity of combustibles to be brought to the entrance and set on fire. The smoke, rolling into the cavern in immense volumes, drove the miserable fugitives into the remoter chambers, where they lingered a little while longer, but were all eventually suffocated. The Turks waited some days, but still did not dare to enter, and a Greek captive was finally sent down on the promise of his life being spared. The Turks then descended and plundered the bodies. A week afterwards, three natives of the village stole into the cavern to see what had become of their friends and relatives. It is said that they were so overcome by the terrible spectacle that two of them died within a few days. Years afterwards, when the last vestiges of the insurrection had been suppressed, the Archbishop of Crete blessed the cavern, making it consecrated ground; and the bones of the victims were gathered together and partially covered up, in the outer chamber—a vast elliptical hall, about eighty feet in height, and propped in the centre by an enormous stalactitic pillar. On all sides the stalactites hang like fluted curtains from the roof, here in broad sheeted masses, there dropping into single sharp folds, but all on a scale of Titanic grandeur. In this imposing and silent hall, under the black banners of eternal Night, lay heaped the mouldering skulls and bones of the poor Christians. They could not have had a more appropriate sepulchre.

Such have been the atrocities of Turkish warfare within the memory of living man; but French officers have in our days emulated the cruelty of Ottoman commanders, and shown that the nation which boasts of marching at the head of civilisation has still retained much of its ancient Gallic barbarism. When Marshal Pelissier filled with smoke the crowded caves of the Dahra in 1844, and destroyed many hundreds of Kabyls whose great crime it was to defend their country against the French hordes, it has been stated, as an excuse for this atrocity, that he left open some of the entrances to the caves, and that he only resorted to the smoke as a means of compelling the fugitives to come out and surrender; but no such excuse can be pleaded in favour of his successor, St. Arnaud. In the summer of 1845,^[23] this French commander received private information that a body of Arabs had taken refuge in the cave of Shelas. Thither he marched a body of troops. Eleven of the fugitives came out and surrendered; but it was known to St. Arnaud, though not to any other Frenchman, that five hundred men remained in the cave. All these people Colonel St. Arnaud determined to kill, and at the same time to keep the deed secret even from the troops engaged in the operation, as the smoking of the Caves of the Dahra had not greatly tended to raise France in the public opinion of Europe. Except his brother and Marshal Bugeaud, whose approval was the prize he sought, no one was to know what he did. He contrived to execute both his purposes. Thus he writes to his brother:—‘I had all the apertures hermetically stopped up. I made one vast sepulchre. No one went into the caverns; no one but myself knew that under these there are 500 brigands who will never again slaughter Frenchmen. A confidential report has told all to the marshal, without terrible poetry or imagery. Brother, no one is so good as I am by taste and by nature. From the 8th to the 12th I have been ill, but my conscience does not reproach me. I have done my duty as a commander, and to-morrow I would do the same over again; but I have taken a disgust to Africa.’ With such nauseous sentiment wrote the man, ‘good by taste and nature,’ who seven years later was to attach the memory of his name to the bloody days of December, and to deal with many a French republican as he had dealt with the Arabs.