HUMAN LAKE-DWELLBBS. 173 



doubt that the Innuits, who practice the same trick, 

 have learned it of the hear, as they have learned their 

 snow architecture of the seal itself. 





HUMAN 

 LAKE-DWELLEES, 



ANCIENT AND MODERN. 



m 



VEE.Y long time ago there were people in 

 different parts of Europe who built what 

 are called lake-dwellings, of which many remains have 

 been discovered. These dwellings, constructed on 

 platforms over the water, must have resembled those 

 of tribes now found thousands of miles from Europe 

 and from each other — in the Malay Archipelago, in 

 !New Gruinea, and in South America. 



How people who never heard of each other have 

 learned to build their houses so much alike is a ques- 

 tion that has never been answered. It seems quite 

 natural that, as all birds of one species, wherever and 

 whenever they construct nests, make them pretty 

 much alike, so all savages belonging to the quiet, 

 peaceful sort who live by fishing along the borders 

 of lakes where they build their villages, are apt, as 

 if by a sort of instinct, to build them in the same 

 way. 



In the settlements of the South American Indians 

 on Lake Maracaybo, in Venezuela, the life of the an- 



