ill. Where the ascent was at all easy it
was made double. Fortified camps are very numerous throughout the hill
country. They vary, of course, in size, but the situation was always
well chosen.<14>

As for the buildings themselves, or huts of the Neolithic people, we
know but little. They were probably built much the same as the houses
in the lake settlements. We meet with some strange modifications in
England. Frequently within these ramparts we find circular pits or
depressions in the ground. They are regarded as vestiges of habitations,
and they must have been mainly under ground. "They occur singly and
in groups, and are carried down to a depth of from seven to ten feet
through the superficial gravel into the chalk, each pit, or cluster of
pits, having a circular shaft for an entrance. At the bottom they vary
from five to seven feet in diameter, and gradually narrow to two and
a half or three feet in diameter in the upper part. The floors were of
chalk, sometimes raised in the center, and the roof had been formed of
interlaced sticks, coated with clay imperfectly burned."<15>

In the north of Scotland, instead of putting them under ground, they
built them on the natural surface, and then built a mound over them all.
In appearance this was scarcely distinguishable from a mound, but on
digging in we discover a series of large chambers, built generally with
stones of considerable size, and converging toward the center, where
an opening appears to have been left for light and ventilation. In some
instances the mound was omitted, and we have simply a cluster of
joining huts, with dry, thick walls. These have been appropriately named
"Bee-hive Houses."<16>

We can form a very good idea of Neolithic Europe from what we have
learned as to their habitations. A well-wooded country, abounding
in lakes and marshes, quite thickly settled, but by a savage people,
divided into many tribes, independent of and hostile to each other.
The lakes were fringed with their peculiar settlements; they are to be
noticed in the marshes, and on commanding heights are still others. The
people were largely hunters and fishers, but, as we shall soon see, they
practised a rude husbandry and had a few domestic animals. Such was
the condition of Europe long before the Greek and Latin tribes lit the
beacon fires of civilization in the south.

It is evident that the builders of the lake settlements and the
fortified villages were an intelligent and