Of Western Europe. 1 5 



Groping in the dark for the history of these early 

 people, we can deal only in hypotheses and probabilities. 

 So, as to the period of the abandonment of the pile 

 dwellings, it can only be said that they were probably 

 abandoned gradually. The increasing sense of confine- 

 ment and discomfort accompanying the development of 

 new wants, which necessarily came with new acquisitions 

 and improvements; or, perhaps, the growth of confi- 

 dence and security which came with the use of metal 

 weapons, or both together, seem to have led to a grad- 

 ual abandonment of these habitations. Villages of the 

 stone age are found in all the lakes; villages of the 

 bronze age are found only in the western lakes. And 

 villages where iron is found have been discovered only 

 in two lakes. The whole system seems to have been 

 finally abandoned about the beginning of the present 

 era. Sir Charles Lyell is probably mistaken in saying 

 that such villages existed at Chavanne and Noville in 

 the sixth century, for they are not named in Sir John 

 Lubbock's later and fuller notice, or in Keller's exhaust- 

 ive account. But some faint traces have lingered to 

 our day. The fishermen in the Limmat built their huts 

 upon the same plan down to the last century, and in a 

 secluded valley in the Vorder Rhine, where an antique 

 dialect is yet heard, the cattle and sheep and pigs show 

 clear traces of the varieties whose bones are found 

 among the remains of the lake dwellings. 



The lake dwellings thus lose much of their mystery. 

 Their buildings differed from their cotemporaries in 

 Western Europe only in the accident of situation. 

 They sought for security in their lakes, as those upon 

 the mainland did upon steep hills. Throughout France, 



