The unlooked-for discovery of lake dwellings in Yorkshire, resembling those of Ireland and Scotland, proves that in Britain also there had been a lacustrine population in times probably prehistoric. During the execution of drainage operations in the Holderness district, bone tools and fragments of piles were exhumed: this led to the discovery of the remains of lake dwellings. The excavations made it apparent that the construction, as is observable also in many Irish crannogs, was of two ages—the stone and the bronze. In the upper stratum, bronze objects, then rude stone, flint, and bone weapons. As in the Irish so in the British remains, the very dressing of the timber framework demonstrates the fact of the constructors having worked in the lower portion with stone, and in the upper with metal hatchets.
It may be remarked that the great city of London seems to have risen from a collection of rude pile dwellings, as traces of these structures have been found both near London-Wall and at Southwark. They are thus described by General Lane-Fox:—“Upon looking over the ground, my attention was at once attracted by a number of piles, the decayed tops of which appeared above the unexcavated portions of the peat, dotted here and there over the whole of the space cleared.… Commencing on the south, a row of them ran north and south on the west side: to the right of these a curved row, as if forming part of a ring. Higher up, and running obliquely across the ground, was a row of piles having a plank about an inch and half thick, and a foot broad, placed along the south face, as if binding the piles together.… The points of the piles were inserted from one to two feet in the gravel, and were for the most part well preserved, but all the tops had rotted off at about two feet above the gravel, which must have been the surface of the ground, or of the water at the time these structures were in existence.”[17] The vast majority of the relics belonged to the Roman era, but there were others of ruder workmanship. The kitchen middens contained cockle, mussel, oyster, and periwinkle shells: amongst the animal remains were those of the red deer, horse, wild boar, goat, dog, and the Bos-primigenius, Trochoceros, Longifrons, and Frontosus. The superincumbent strata varied from 18 to 21 feet in depth. The Thames, formerly a less deep but wider river than at present, appears to have had a pile-dwelling population established on its shallows at various favourable points. At Kew, near the mouth of the Brent, piles have been disclosed to view, marking as is supposed the site of an ancient “water-town;” and at Barnes, in the opposite bend of the stream, similar remains have been observed associated with flints, celts, and other primitive relics. Well-authenticated lacustrine sites have been discovered at Wretham Mere, in Norfolk;[18] at Barton Mere, near Bury St. Edmund’s;[19] on Cold Ash Common, Berks;[20] and in Llangorse lake, near Brecon, South Wales.[21]
Dr. Munro is of opinion that the lake dwellings of Scotland were erected by the semi-Romanized Celtic inhabitants, as a means of protection when they were left to contend against the attacks of the Angles, the Picts, and the Scots, upon the withdrawal of the Roman legions from Britain; but when Cæsar arrived on the banks of the Thames the use of wooden stakes, palisading, and piles, for defensive purposes, was, as described by him,[22] common amongst the Britons—defences which were in fact of the nature of the palisading with which Irish and Scotch lake dwellings were surrounded. These works seem to have been of an enduring character, for the Venerable Bede, writing at the commencement of the eighth century, states that some of the stakes retained their position even in his day. A very interesting account given by Adulfeda, Syrian Prince and historian, who wrote about the commencement of the fourteenth century, depicts the Apamæan lake as a collection of small sheets of water of little depth, linked together by huge swamps. The string of lakelets was margined with dense borders of reeds, flags, and willows, and abounded in game and fish. Adulfeda describes the most northerly lake of this chain as “commonly called the lake of the Christians, because it is inhabited by Christian fishermen who live here on the lake in wooden huts built upon piles.”[23]
Venice, the once proud Queen of the Adriatic, the whilom mart of Europe, with her lofty campanile, her beautiful temples, and her marble palaces, rising vision-like from her watery bed, was in origin but a cluster of fisher huts perched on piles in the shallow lagoons at the mouth of the Po, a site selected by these toilers of the sea for security and refuge from the ravages of the Huns under Attila. In the commencement of the sixteenth century, when the Spaniards marched on Mexico, “they saw, as they passed along, several large towns resting on piles, and reaching far into the water, a kind of architecture which found great favour with the Aztecs.” These first founders of what now is the city of Mexico, after enduring the casualties and hardships of a migratory life, at length resolved to erect a permanent abode; and to protect themselves from their surrounding enemies, laid the foundations of the future city “by sinking piles into the shallows, for the low marshes were half buried under water: on these they erected their light fabrics of reeds and rushes, and sought a precarious subsistence from fishing, and from the wild fowl which frequented the waters, as well as from the cultivation of such simple vegetables as they could raise on their floating gardens.”[24] The Spaniards who first visited the shores of Maracaibo, to the North of the South American Continent, found the natives living in huts on piles in the water. They named the locality Venezuela i. e. “Little Venice”: that name now embraces a forest tract as large as France, a mountain tract larger than Switzerland, and steppes like those of Mongolia. Vasco Nunez failed in an attack on a tribe in Dabaybe, who lived in huts stretching from tree trunk to tree trunk growing in a watery swamp. The city of Tchakash is built over the river Don, and it has been suggested that the huts raised on piles by the fishermen of the Bosphorus may represent there the last lingering traces of an ancient custom.
Captain Hiram Cox, in his Journal of a Residence in the Burmhan Empire, written in the year 1796-7, describes the villages along the banks of the Rangoon river as “built of bamboo and cadjan, raised on piles in the manner of the Malays,” and throughout his diary he makes frequent allusion to this singular custom. Forrest says that in many parts of the coast of New Guinea the people live in huts placed on stages erected on posts, as a means of protection against the attacks of their enemies, the Haraforas, from the interior of the country. On these stages they haul up their proas or canoes. Similar structures have been described by travellers in the Celebes, the Caroline Islands, and elsewhere in Polynesia.
D’Albertes, in his New Guinea, states that the house inhabited by him at Salwatee was suspended over the sea on piles, and adds, “all, or nearly all, the houses are built like ours, on piles, and are surrounded by water at high tide, some indeed at all times, and the people go to and fro by means of a bridge made of the trunks of small trees. At a distance of little more than half a mile there is another small village.” On the river Ramoi, D’Albertes saw four or five houses built on piles about 20 feet high; and when describing a native village, of the people of Mausniam, he states that all “the houses are built on wooden piles driven into the sea, and approached by a bridge constructed of the trunks of small trees.” At Lorony nearly the entire village was over the water. “The houses of Mafor are built entirely in the water, so that a little bridge is necessary to enter them from the shore.” “The Arfahs live in small villages, in houses built on piles.”[25]
In the bay of Dorei, in New Guinea, there are four villages erected on piles over the sea. Each village contains from eight to fifteen houses; each house consists of a row of distinct rooms, and contains several families. These structures are entirely formed of wood very roughly finished. The same writer states, “Formerly the entire town of Tondano was erected in the lake, the only means of communication from one house to another being by boat. In the year 1810, relying on the strength of this position, the inhabitants, who were at strife with the Dutch, tried to shake off their yoke, took up arms, and were beaten. It was with difficulty the Dutch succeeded in subduing them, for which purpose they had to employ artillery and to build gunboats. To avoid a repetition of similar troubles, the natives were forbidden in the future to construct their dwellings on the lake.”[26]
The dwellings of the Dyaks are described by the Bishop of Labuan as “built along the river side on an elevated platform 20 or 30 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.”[27] Munro draws attention to the lake dwellings at Singapore, erected on a series of tall piles, the flooring considerably above the surface of the water: in the intervening space light boats were suspended. It would also appear that pile dwellings of circular shape are to be observed in parts of Japan. Captain Cook notices the summer and winter habitations of a tribe called Tschutski in Kamtschatka. The winter lodge is sunk below the surface; the summer, raised above the ground and constructed on a platform supported on poles.
Whilst staying at Maracaibo, in Venezuela, a traveller took great interest in a singular tribe of Indians called Guajiros, who lived near the town in “pile dwellings.” He was conveyed to his destination in a rude canoe, formed simply of the hollowed-out trunk of a tree. On reaching the village, the huts, with their low sloping roofs, were seen to be perched on high piles over the shallow waters, and to be connected with each other by narrow plank bridges formed of the split stems of palm trees. To enter the huts, the visitor had to climb an upright pole by means of notches cut in the side. “Each house or cock-loft consisted of two parts, the pent-roof shelter being partitioned off in the middle; the front apartment served the double purpose of entrance hall and kitchen; the rear apartment as a reception and dwelling chamber, and it was not a little surprising to observe how clean it was kept. The floor was formed of split stems of trees, set close together, and covered with mats. Weapons and utensils were placed in order in the corners.… The positions chosen for their erection are near the mouths of rivers and in shallow waters; the piles on which they rest are driven deep into the oozy bottom, and so firmly do they hold that there is no shakiness of the loftily-perched dwelling perceptible, even when crowded with people.… They are the invention, not exactly of savages, but of tribes of men in a very primitive stage of culture: such probably were the people who lived in the prehistoric lake dwellings of Switzerland.”[28] Similar habitations are to be found