CONSTRUCTION OF THE PLATFORMS. 189 



cular and horizontal piles firmly together. Still the " Fack- 

 werkbauten" were not suitable for the larger lakes, as during 

 storms they would have been injured by the waves, which 

 must have passed harmlessly through the open work of the 

 " Pfahlbauten." We find, therefore, that while the former 

 method of construction prevailed only in small lakes or 

 morasses, the latter was adopted in the larger lakes, and even 

 sometimes, possibly, on dryland; a custom which, however 

 singular, exists at the present day, as, for instance, in the island 

 of Borneo, and even in Switzerland itself. 



The antiquities found in the small Swiss lakes and peat- 

 bogs are more or less covered by a thick layer of peat, which 

 perhaps at some future date will give us a clue to their age. 

 On the contrary, in the large lakes no peat grows. At the 

 entrance of the rivers, indeed, much mud and gravel is of 

 course accumulated ; the Lake of Geneva, for instance, once 

 no doubt extended for a considerable distance up the Valley 

 of the Ehone. But the gravel and mud brought down by that 

 river are deposited, as every one knows, near its entrance into 

 the lake, and the water of the lake is elsewhere beautifully 

 clear and pure. 



The lake itself is very deep, in parts as much as nine 

 hundred and eighty feet ; and the banks are generally steep, 

 but round the margin there is, in most places, a fringe of 

 shallow water, due, probably, to the erosive action of the 

 waves, and known to the fishermen as the "blancfond," because 

 the lake is there of a pale greyish hue, when contrasted with 

 the bright blue of the central deeper water. It is on this 

 " blancfond," and at a depth of sometimes as much as fifteen 

 feet, that the Ffahlbauten were generally constructed. On 

 calm days, when the surface of the water is unruffled, the piles 

 are plainly visible. Few of them now project more than two 

 feet from the bottom ; eaten away by the incessant action of 

 the water, some of them " n'apparaissent plus que comme 



