OUR HUMBLE HELPERS 



little wicker boat bobs up and down. Into this boat 

 its owners can step right from their threshhold. 



"The straggling village, in fact, instead of being 

 built on a continuous artificial soil, is cut up into nu- 

 merous passages of open water ; the village streets 

 are canals. To pass from one quarter to another, 

 or merely to visit one's neighbor, one must go by 

 water. So all day long there is a continual coming 

 and going of boats from one group of huts to an- 

 other. There is no less movement between the vil- 

 lage and the shores of the lake, whither the men go 

 a-hunting and whence they return with their boats 

 laden with venison, when the aurochs or elk has suc- 

 cumbed to the combined exertions of men and dogs. 



"Thus, in prehistoric times, were settlements es- 

 tablished on the various lakes of France, and, still 

 more, of Switzerland lakes large enough to hold 

 these villages by the hundred. To-day the fisher- 

 man whose line ripples their limpid waters sees in 

 the blue depths, amid a great mass of stones, the tops 

 of piles carbonized by the centuries, and large, bulg- 

 ing pieces of earthenware, which he breaks with his 

 oar without suspecting their venerable origin. 

 That is what is left us of the ancient lake villages." 



