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 the building there was a hearth made of slabs of
stone.

The people who inhabited these structures belonged either to the later
Stone Age, or the Bronze Age, as we learn from the relics which their
huts disclose. In the earlier ones are found celts, flint flakes,
arrow-heads, harpoons of stag's horn with barbs, awls, needles, chisels,
and fish-hooks made of bone, and sometimes wooden combs, and skates made
out of the leg-bone of a horse. Besides the remains of the usual
domestic animals we find bones of the beaver, bear, elk, and bison.

When the use of bronze was discovered the people still lived on in their
lake dwellings. Fire often played havoc with the wooden wattle walls;
hence we frequently find a succession of platforms. The first dwelling
having been destroyed by flames, a second one was subsequently
constructed; and this having shared the same fate, another platform with
improved huts was raised upon the ruins of its predecessors. The relics
of each habitation show that, as time went on, the pit dwellers advanced
in civilisation, and increased the comforts and conveniences of life.