222 THE WORSHIP OF LAKES. 



les poutres aussi bien que les vases en terre. On expliquerait 

 ainsi comment il se fait que les objets en bronze sont presque 

 tous neufs, que les vases sont entiers et reunis sur un seul 

 point." Col. Schwab, however, than whom no man has had 

 more experience in such matters, while agreeing that compa- 

 ratively little is ever found except in such Lake villages as 

 show traces of fire, expresses himself decidedly, and I think 

 with reason, against the " bazaar" theory. 



It has been suggested that the early inhabitants of Switzer- 

 land may have worshipped the lakes, and that the beautiful 

 bracelets, etc., may have been offerings to the gods. In fact, 

 it appears from ancient writers that among the Gauls, Germans, 

 and other nations, many lakes were regarded as sacred. Accord- 

 ing to Cicero,* Justin,-)- and StraboJ there was a lake near Tou- 

 louse in which the neighbouring tribes used to deposit offerings 

 of gold and silver. Tacitus, Pliny, and Virgil also mention the 

 existence of sacred lakes. Again, so late as the sixth century, 

 Gregory of Tours tells us (De Glor. Confes. chap, ii.) that on 

 Mount Helanus there was a lake which was the object of 

 popular worship. Every year the inhabitants of the neighbour- 

 hood brought to it offerings of clothes, skins, cheese, cakes, etc. 

 Traces of a similar superstition may still be found lingering in 

 the remote parts of Scotland and Ireland; in the former country 

 I have myself seen a sacred spring surrounded by the offerings 

 of the neighbouring peasantry, who seemed to consider pence 

 and halfpence as the most appropriate and agreeable sacrifice 

 to the Spirit of the Waters. Neither the coarse, broken 

 pottery, the castaway fragments of bones, nor the traces of 

 habitations, can, however, be accounted for in this manner. 



The pottery of the Bronze period is more varied and more 

 skilfully made than that of the Stone Age, but the potter's 



* De Nat. Deor. lib. iii. xxx. See also Wylie, " On Lake- 



f Just, xxxii. iii. dwellings of the Early Periods," 



| Geog. vol. iv. Arclucul. vol. xxxviii. p. 181. 



