Says Keller:[69] "The shores of the western portion of Lake Constance are probably more thickly studded with settlements than those of any other Swiss lake. In fact, here are found happily united all the requirements necessary for the erection of dwellings of this nature. A deposit of marl stretches along nearly the whole of its shores and of tolerable breadth. A rich tract of country between the shore and the hills which rise quietly behind; forests of pine and oak; pleasant bays with a gravelly bottom; a great abundance of fish in the lake, and a superfluity of game in the surrounding forests, were circumstances highly favorable to the colonization of these shores." Could we have sat on one of these village platforms of a summer afternoon and looked out to the wheat-fields on the shore, and seen the canoes come in with fish or game, and the cattle returning from the mainland pasture; could we have watched the men fashioning implements and all manner of woodwork, and the women grinding the grain or moulding pottery, or spinning and weaving; we should have found a great deal to please and interest us. The fruits and berries, the smell of roasting fish and baking bread, of cakes well flavored with the oil from beechnut or flax, or perhaps sifted over with the seeds of poppy or caraway, would have been far from disagreeable. We should have felt that it was a goodly land, and that life was well worth living. We should not have been disturbed by shrieking steamboats, puffing and groaning locomotives, or honking automobiles, or by telegraphs or telephones, by letters which must be answered or books which must be read. There were no stocks and bonds, bills or notes, strikes or lockouts. There was no labor question; all simply had to work. No one went to school, except to nature, and there were no lectures. "The name of that chamber was peace." We ought not to forget in our comfort that everybody could not live in a lake-dwelling, that all over Europe there were other settlements or dwellings, more lonely or isolated, where food was never abundant and sometimes very scarce, where labor was unremitting and the reward scanty. But even in those less civilized regions there was probably usually much rude comfort; and if there were times of scarcity and want, there were also times of feasting and abundance. All over Europe there were, even in Neolithic time, children, boys and girls playing around the houses; and young men and women looking out on life with the same inexperience and illusions, courage and hopes, which lure us onward to-day. CHAPTER V A GLANCE EASTWARD