THE ARROU ISLANDS. 
105 
and looks like a collection of old barns, with a carved ornament surmounting the gable-end 
of each. The town or village owes its existence to the necessity of providing accommodation 
for the Chinese and Malay traders who land at a certain time of year in search of pearl 
shells, the gorgeous plumage of the bird of paradise, edible birds’ nests, and trepang. At 
the same time, shipbuilding is carried on to a large extent; the beach was covered with the 
hulls of prahus in various stages of preparation, and the sound of the hammer and axe was 
heard from morn till eve. Dobbo consists of a long and narrow main street, with a second 
street behind running parallel with the principal thoroughfare. The houses are built upon 
piles, a slender framework of bamboo doing duty for walls, partitions, and floors, the whole 
being covered with a steep roof thatched with palm leaves. The rooms occupied by the 
inmates are all on the first floor, reached by a ladder from the outside. The space below 
is used as a store-room, or, if not made a receptacle for all sorts of refuse, is handed over 
to poultry and pigs. 
Here and elsewhere in the Indian Archipelago, but especially at the Ki Islands and 
in the Philippines, it struck me that the style of building affected by the natives must have 
originated in lake-dwellings, which are even now frequently met with in the far East. The 
houses are simply such abodes transferred, as it were, on shore, with their foundation of 
piles, their platform and ladder. Since the interesting discovery of the remains of ancient 
villages in the lakes of Europe, surprise has been frequently expressed that man should have 
preferred to build his home upon the water rather than on land. Apart from the obvious 
advantages which a lake-dwelling offers as regards protection against wild animals, dangerous 
reptiles, and human foes, and also for purposes of cleanliness, it should not be overlooked 
that the land in its primitive condition—that is to say, in most cases covered with forest, 
and, for want of drainage, reduced to a swamp—is by no means a desirable place to build 
a house upon. Affording little or no protection against attack, unhealthy, and presenting 
serious obstacles to communication, land must have appeared to the primitive dwellers on 
earth very inferior to water, whether river or lake, or to the sea-shore, considering the 
facilities which these afforded as a means of communication, of protection, and, not least, 
' as offering an almost inexhaustible store of food ever within reach, and requiring little 
cooking. Besides, the clearing and drainage of land, the construction of roads and bridges, 
the use of vehicles and beasts of draught, are processes only possible in an advanced stage 
of civilisation, and imply, amongst other necessaries, the possession of powerful tools and the 
knowledge of working metals, which the primitive races of mankind have lacked for thousands 
of years, and do not possess even at the present day. The raft, the hollow trunk of a tree, 
probably preceded any other mode of conveyance by many centuries, and water must have 
been from the beginning, as it is still, the great highway of communication between man 
and man, civilisation having spread, as far back as we can follow its traces, from island 
to island, along the course of great rivers and lakes, round the shores of the smaller seas, 
until at last it embraced the confines of the ocean itself. The assertion that man owes his 
advance in the social scale more to the facilities of locomotion presented by water than to 
