Each  platform  seems  to  have  been  thickly
crowded  with  huts,  with  only  about  three  feet
of  space  between.  Here  he  lived  with  his  wives
and  his  sons  and  his  daughters,  his  uncles  and
his  cousins,  his  oxen  and  his  asses,  in  emulation
of  Noah.  Probably,  stabled  in  the  lake  below
him  he  kept  his  pet  hippopotamus,  or  behemoth,
or  whatever  were  the  prehistoric  equivalents  of
the  Persian  cat  and  the  Pekinese.
The  watery  stronghold  has  always  been  dear
to  the  heart  of  the  Celtic  peoples.     In  Ireland  it
persisted  well  into  the  sixteenth  century,  and  in
the  wilder  Scottish  Highlands  are  scattered  evi-
dences that  it  was  not  despised  by  the  chieftains
of  Ossian  and  Fingal.     These  lacustrine  Venices
in  times  of  peace  were  often  connected  with  the
strand  by  a  long  and  narrow  gangway,  built
so  that  it  might  easily  be  destroyed  when  the
war-note  sounded  over  the  hills.     Then  when
there  were  things  a-doing  on  the  mainland  the  -
prehistoric  warriors,   at  dead  of  night,   would  i
shoot  silently  over  the  waters  in  long  canoes  i
of  bark,  deftly  steering  among  the  shadows  oni
the  lake  to  elude  a  watchful  eye.     One  of  these
canoes  has  been  found  deeply  embedded  in  the  -
mud  at  the  bottom  of  Lake  Neuchatel.    A  curious  i

38


Neuchatel

structure  it  is,  forty  feet  in  length  by  only
four  in  breadth,  hollowed  out  of  a  tree- trunk.
The  lake-dweller  must  have  had  the  skill  of
an  Oxford  blue  to  sail  so  frail  a  craft  in  safety.
