Notwithstanding the striking and singular appearance the Swiss
lake-dwellings must have presented to foreigners and strangers, it
is a remarkable fact that Roman writers are entirely silent about
them. Nor can this silence be accounted for on the supposition that
the lake-dwellings had entirely come to an end prior to Roman times,
as several of them have furnished antiquities whose Roman origin
cannot be mistaken. Some archæologists think they recognise in the
representation of a Dacian village on the Column of Trajan a true
pile-village (B. 164); but this is doubtful, and, even if true, it is
but a very meagre evidence of the custom, and leaves the problem of
the lake-dwellings as mysterious as ever. Such reticence on the part
of classical writers does not, however, extend to the class of ancient
remains I am now about to describe.
Pliny very distinctly states that the Chauci (Frisians and other races
along the coast of the German Ocean) were in the habit of constructing
artificial mounds, on which they built their houses so as to be beyond
the influence of the waves and tides. The following passage from his
"Natural History"[64] will be read with interest in relation to the
recent discoveries that have been made in the localities referred to.
"I have myself personally witnessed the condition of the Chauci, both
the Greater and the Lesser, situate in the regions of the far north.
In these climates a vast tract of land, invaded twice each day and
night by the overflowing waves of the ocean, opens a question that is
eternally proposed to us by Nature, whether these regions are to be
looked upon as belonging to the land, or whether as forming a portion
of the sea?
"Here a wretched race is found, inhabiting either the more elevated
spots of land, or else eminences artificially constructed, and of a
height to which they know by experience that the highest tides will
never reach. Here they pitch their cabins; and when the waves cover
the surrounding country far and wide, like so many mariners on board
ship are they; when, again, the tide recedes, their condition is that
of so many shipwrecked men, and around their cottages they pursue
the fishes as they make their escape with the receding tide. It is
not their lot, like the adjoining nations, to keep any flocks for
sustenance by their milk, nor even to maintain a warfare with wild
beasts, every shrub, even, being banished afar. With the sedge and the
rushes of the marsh they make cords, and with these they weave the
nets employed in the capture of the fish; they fashion the mud, too,
with their hands, and drying it by the help of the winds more than
of the sun, cook their food by its aid, and so warm their entrails,
frozen as they are by the northern blasts; their only drink, too, is
rainwater, which they collect in holes dug at the entrance of their
abodes; and yet these nations, if this very day they were vanquished
by the Roman people, would exclaim against being reduced to slavery!
Be it so, then--Fortune is most kind to many, just when she means to
punish them."
Notwithstanding the preciseness of Pliny's description and the fact
that for several centuries, since the great sea-dykes were erected,
the scattered remains of these mounds have been accessible on dry
land, they have only quite recently attracted the attention of
archæologists. I consider their investigation important, not only for
the large amount of industrial remains they contain, but for supplying
a missing link in the evidence of continuity in the European habit of
constructing pile-dwellings.