in the
vast underground cathedral that pre-historic man has chosen for his
picture-gallery. This was a later stock, that had in the meantime
learnt how to draw to perfection. Consider the bold black and white
of that portrait of a wild pony, with flowing mane and tail, glossy
barrel, and jolly snub-nosed face. It is four or five feet across,
and not an inch of the work is out of scale. The same is true of nearly
every one of the other fifty or more figures of game-animals. These
artists could paint what they saw.

Yet they could paint up on the walls what they thought, too. There
are likewise whole screeds of symbols waiting, perhaps waiting for
ever, to be interpreted. The dots and lines and pothooks clearly belong
to a system of picture-writing. Can we make out their meaning at all?
Once in a way, perhaps. Note these marks looking like two different
kinds of throwing-club; at any rate, there are Australian weapons not
unlike them. To the left of them are a lot of dots in what look like
patterns, amongst which we get twice over the scheme of one dot in
the centre of a circle of others. Then, farther still to the left,
comes the painted figure of a bison; or, to be more accurate, the front
half is painted, the back being a piece of protruding rock that gives
the effect of low relief. The bison is rearing back on its haunches,
and there is a patch of red paint, like an open wound, just over the
region of its heart. Let us try to read the riddle. It may well embody
a charm that ran somewhat thus: "With these weapons, and by these
encircling tactics, may we slay a fat bison, O ye powers of the dark!"
Depend upon it, the men who went half a mile into the bowels of a
mountain, to paint things up on the walls, did not do so merely for
fun. This is a very eerie place, and I daresay most of us would not
like to spend the night there alone; though I know a pre-historian
who did. In Australia, as we shall see later on, rock-paintings of
game-animals, not so lifelike as these of the old days, but symbolic
almost beyond all recognizing, form part of solemn ceremonies whereby
good hunting is held to be secured. Something of the sort, then, we
may suppose, took place ages ago in the cave of Niaux. So, indeed,
it was a cathedral after a fashion; and, having in mind the carven
pillars of stalactite, the curving alcoves and side-chapels, the
shining white walls, and the dim ceiling that held in scorn our powerful
lamps, I venture to q