WORLE CAMP. 75 
them, most likely filled with wattle or wicker-work, or 
perhaps merely interwoven with brush-wood, and the whole 
was finished with a roof either of thatch or turf, which 
might have had an opening in the centre, serving the 
purpose of a chimney. How these huts were lighted or 
ventilated it is of course, at this distance of time, useless 
to enquire. 
It is a curious fact that Catlın, in his work on the 
American Indians, gives a sketch of the site of an ancient 
Mandan town, (which tribe, from some peculiarity in their 
language, he supposes to be of Celtic derivation,) re- 
presenting a place which, if an antiquary were to meet 
with on one of our hills or downs, he would at once pro- 
nounce it to be a British village; and gives the following 
account of the construction of their lodges, probably 
not unlike that common among the Celtic inhabi- 
tants of Britain before the time of its occupation by the 
Romans. He says—“ Their village has a most novel 
appearance to the eye of a stranger. Their lodges are 
elosely grouped together, leaving but just room enough 
for walking and riding between them, and appear from 
without to be entirely built of dirt ; but one is surprised 
when he enters them, to see the neatness, comfort, and 
spacious dimensions of these earth-covered dwellings. 
They all have a circular form, and are from forty to sixty 
feet in diameter ; their foundations are prepared by digging 
some two feet in the ground, and forming the floor of earth, 
by levelling the requisite size for the lodge. These floors 
or foundations are all perfeetly circular, and varying in 
size in proportion to the number of the inmates, or the 
quality or standing of the families which are to occupy 
them ; the superstructure is then produced by arranging 
inside of this eircular excavation, firmly fixed in the 
K3 
