and inspect these habitations for ourselves. Ancient classical writers are not altogether silent on the subject. Hippocrates, who lived upwards of 400 years B.C., when describing the manner of life of the inhabitants of Phasis, a region of the Black Sea, says that the country was fenny and wooded, the climate warm and humid; but despite these disadvantages, the natives lived entirely in the swamps, “for their dwellings are constructed of wood and reeds, and are erected amidst the waters.” He adds that they seldom practise walking, either in the city or the market, but sail up and down in canoes constructed out of single trees, for there are many canals there.[9] An account is given by Herodotus of the abode of a Thracian tribe, the Pæonians, who lived on Lake Prasias, now Lake Takinos, situated in the country known in the present day as Roumelia. The habitations of this tribe were reared on platforms, raised on piles above the water, and connected with the shore by a narrow causeway of similar formation. This tribe successfully resisted the attack of a Persian army under the satrap Myabyzus. The Father of History thus describes this settlement:--“The habitations on the lake of Prasias are of this nature--floors laid on lofty poles stand in the middle of the lake,[10] with a narrow entrance by one bridge from the mainland. All the inhabitants used to drive, at their common expense, the piles that served to support the floors. Subsequently they have adopted the following regulation: for every woman a man marries he is to drive three piles, which they procure from a mountain called Orbelus. Now, every man takes several wives. They dwell here in the following manner: each has a hut in which he lives, and a trap-door in the floor opening down to the water. To their horses and draught cattle they give as fodder fish, of which there is such an abundance that when one opens his trap-door, and lets down his empty basket into the lake by a cord, after waiting only a short time, he hauls it up full of fish.”[11] The fishermen of this lake still continue, as in the time of Herodotus, to inhabit huts built over the water.[12] In Layard’s work, descriptive of the discoveries on the site of Nineveh, there is an engraving of a bas-relief from the palace of Sennacherib, which represents an artificial island, apparently formed by weaving together the tall reeds that grew on the banks of the Euphrates; and a prehistoric age is indicated by the dwellings which existed in the Gocktscha lake in Armenia.