et long by 150 in
breadth; and that at Sutz on the Lake of Bienne covers six acres, and is
connected with the shore by a gangway 100 feet long and 40 feet wide.
Nor is the use of these habitations entirely abandoned at the present
time. Venezuela, which means "little Venice," derives its name from the
Indian village composed of pile dwellings on the shores of the Gulf of
Maracaibo, as its original explorer Alonzo de Ojeda in 1499 chose to
compare the sea-protected huts with the queen city of the Adriatic; and
in many parts of South America, in the estuaries of the Orinoco and
Amazon, such dwellings are still found, also among the Dyaks of Borneo,
in the Caroline Islands, and on the Gold Coast of Africa. Herodotus
describes similar dwellings on the Lake Prasias, existing in the fifth
century B.C., and Lord Avebury states that now the Roumelian fishermen
on the same lake "inhabit wooden cottages built over the water as in the
time of Herodotus."

These habitations of primitive man were built on piles driven into the
bed of the lake or river. These piles were stems, or trunks of trees,
sharpened with stone or bronze tools. A rude platform was erected on
these piles, and on this a wooden hut constructed with walls of wattle
and daub, and thatched with reeds or rushes. A bridge built on piles
connected the lake village with the shore whither the dwellers used to
go to cultivate their wheat, barley, and flax, and feed their kine and
sheep and goats. They made canoes out of hollow trunks of trees. One of
these canoes which have been discovered is 43 feet in length and over 4
feet wide. The beams supporting the platform, on which the huts were
erected, were fastened by wooden pins. Much ingenuity was exercised in
the making of these dwellings. Sometimes they found that the mud of the
lake was too soft to hold the piles; so they fashioned a framework of
trunks of trees, which they let down to the bottom of the lake, and
fastened the upright piles to it. Sometimes the rocky bed of the lake
prevented the piles from being driven into it; so they heaped stones
around the piles, and thus made them secure. The lake dwellers were very
sociable, and had only one common platform for all the huts, which were
clustered together. As all the actual dwellings have been destroyed by
time's rude action, it is impossible to describe them accurately; but
their usual size was about 20 feet by 12 feet. The floor was of clay,
and in the centre of th