35 
wooden cottages built over the water as in the time of Hero- 
dotus. The city of Tcherkask is built over the Don. The city 
of Borneo is altogether built upon piles; and similar construc- 
tions have been described by various travellers in New Guinea, 
Celebes, Solo, Ceram, Mindanao, the Caroline Islands, and 
elsewhere. Dumont D'Urville thus describes the city of Dorei 
in New Guinea. 
" The inhabitants are distributed in four villages at the edge of 
the water. Each village contains from eight to fifteen houses 
built on piles ; but each house is composed of a row of distinct 
cells or cabins, separated by a passage which runs from end to 
end. These buildings are entirely made of wood, very roughly 
worked ; they show the light through in all directions, and often 
shake when anyone walks over the floor." 
The fishermen's huts which still existed in the river Limmat, 
near Zurich, at the end of the last century, were of a similar 
nature. 
The Bishop of Labuan thus describes the dwellings 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 refuse falls through and goes below." 
Captain Burton mentions a visit to an African tribe, the Iso, 
who, during some forgotten war, fled from Dahome, and esta- 
blished themselves in a lagoon marked in our charts as the Den- 
ham Waters. "The Dahomean King is sworn never to lead 
his army where canoes may be required ; these Iso, therefore, 
have built their huts upon tall poles, about a mile distant from 
the shore. Their villages at once suggest the Prasian lake-dwel- 
lings of Herodotus, and the crannoges of Ireland and the Swiss 
waters. The people are essentially boatmen ; they avoid dry 
land as much as possible, and, though said to be ferocious, 
they are civil enough to strangers. In June, 1863, I moored my 
little canoe under one of their huts, and I well remember the 
grotesque sensation of hearing children, dogs, pigs, and poultry 
actively engaged aloft." 
