PILE-DWELLINGS STILL USED IN VARIOUS COUNTRIES. 123 



Salonica that the fishermen of Lake Prasias still inhabit 

 wooden cottages built over the water, as in the time of Herodo- 

 tus. The city of Tcherkask also is built over the Don. But it 

 is in the East Indies that this habit prevails most extensively. 

 The city of Borneo is altogether built upon piles, and similar 

 constructions have been described by various travellers in 

 JSTew Guinea, Celebes, Solo, Ceram, Mindanao, the Caroline 

 Islands, and elsewhere. Dampier long ago mentioned similar 

 dwellings constructed over the water, and Dumont d'Urville,* 

 quoted by M. Troy on, tells us that " Jadis toute la ville de 

 Tondano etait construite sur le lac, et Ton ne communiquait 

 d'une maison a une autre qu'en bateau. Forts de cette disposi- 

 tion, en 1810, les habitants eurent des demeles avec les Hollan- 

 dais, et voulurent secouer leur joug : ils s'armerent et furent 

 battus. Ce ne fut pas sans peine qu'on en vint a bout : il 

 fallut y porter de Tartillerie et construire des bateaux can- 

 noniers. Depuis ce temps, et pour eviter cet inconvenient 

 on a defendu aux indigenes de construire leurs habitations 

 sur le lac/* The Bishop of Labuan thus describes the dwel- 

 lings of the Dyaks : " They are built along the river side, on 

 an elevated platform twenty or thirty feet high, in a long 

 row; or rather it is a whole village in one row of some 

 hundreds of feet long. The platforms are first framed with 

 beams, and then crossed with laths about two inches wide 

 and two inches apart, and in this way are well ventilated ; 

 and nothing remains on the floors, but all the refuse falls 

 through and goes below." f 



The Swiss " Pfahlbauten," or Lake-habitations, have been 

 described by Dr. Keller, in five memoirs presented to the Anti- 

 quarian Society of Zurich, in 1854, 1858, 1860, and 1863, and 

 by M. Troyon, in a special work, "Sur les Habitations Lacus- 

 tres," I860, in which the author gives a general account of 



* Voyage de 1* Astrolabe, vol. v. p. 635. 

 f Trans, of the Ethnol. Soc., New Ser./vol. ii. p. 28. 



