THE PHILIPHNE ISLANDS. ;;99 



structure. Even then the ground-floor is often still used only 

 as a store-house or piggery, "but in many cases is regularly 

 occupied. 



Thus in these houses, what would seem almost an impos- 

 sibility is nevertheless the fact. The ground-floor is an addition 

 to the first story, which latter is older than it, and preceded it. 

 The verandah is the representative of the platform originally 

 intended for the inhabitants to land on from canoes. 



I watched the building of one house, which when finished 

 looked perfectly two-storied, the lower part being neatly boarded 

 in, and provided with a door and windows. Nevertheless, in 

 the construction of the house, the history of its development 

 was exactly recapitulated, just as is the case familiarly in 

 natural history. The roof and first story were built first 

 complete upon the piles, and the lower structure added in 

 afterwards. 



I could not help being struck by the remarkable resem- 

 blances of many of these Malay houses to Swiss chalets. In the 

 chalet the basement enclosed with stone walls is usually only a 

 cattle-stall, the first story is the dwelling-house, and as in the 

 Malay building, is constructed of wood. It seems possible that 

 the chalet is the ancient lake-dwelling gone on shore, like the 

 Malay pile-dwelling, and that the substructure of masonry 

 represents the piles which formerly supported the inhabited 

 portion of the house. There are similar balconies in the chalets 

 representing possibly the platforms. A good deal of the carving 

 of balconies, and some of the staircases, in the better constructed 

 wooden houses in Ilo Ilo, reminded me very much of that of 

 the same structures in chalets, though the resemblance in this 

 case is accidental. 



The most interesting feature about pile-dwellings seems to be 

 their very wide geographical extension. Eepresentatives of 

 almost all races of man seem to have arrived at the same 

 expedient, apparently not by any means a simple one, indepen- 

 dently of one another. There are the well-known Pfhalbauten 

 of Switzerland, in South America the similar houses of the 

 Cuajiro Indians, on the Gulf of Maracaibo. In North America 

 the Haidahs on the north-west coast construct similar habi- 



