enote: Present distribution.]

Among Europeans such pile villages belong to primitive stages of
development, chiefly to the Stone, Bronze, and early Iron Ages. They are
widely distributed in modern times among retarded peoples, who in this
way seek compensation for their social and economic weakness. In South
America, the small timid tribe of the native Warraus till quite recently
built their dwellings on platforms over the water in the river network
of the Orinoco delta and along the swamp coast as far as the Essequibo.
These pile villages, "_fondata sopra l'acqua come Venezia_," as
Vespuccius says, suggested to him the name of Venezuela or little Venice
for this coast.[584] A pile village in Jull Lake, a lacustrine expansion
in a tributary of the upper Salwin River, is inhabited by the Inthas,
apparently an alien colony in Burma. They have added a detail in their
floating gardens, rafts covered with soil, on which they raise tomatoes,
watermelons and gourds.[585]

In little Lake Mohrya, located near the upper Lualaba River, a southern
headstream of the Congo, Cameron found numerous pile dwellings, whose
owners moved about in dug-out canoes and cultivated fields on land,[586]
as did their Swiss confreres of twenty centuries ago. Livingstone, in
descending from Lake Nyassa by the Shire River, found in the lakelet of
Pamalombe, into which the stream widened, similar water huts inhabited
by a number of Manganja families, who had been driven from their homes
by slave raiders. The slender reeds of the papyrus thicket, lining the
shore in a broad band, served as piles, number compensating for the lack
of strength; the reeds, bent downward and fastened together into a mat,
did indeed support their light dwellings, but heaved like thin ice when
the savages moved from hut to hut. The dense forest of papyrus left
standing between village and shore effectually screened their retreat,
and the abundant fish in the lake provided them with food.[587]

[Sidenote: Malayan pile dwellings.]

In the vast island world of Indonesia, where constant contact with the
sea has bred the amphibian Malay race, we are not surprised to find that
the typical Malay house is built on piles above the water; and that when
the coast Malay is driven inland by new-comers of his own stock and
forced to abandon his favorite occupations of trade, piracy and fishing,
he takes to agriculture but still retains his sea-born architecture and
raises his hut on pol