[Sidenote:  In Melanesia.]

Farther east in Melanesia, whose coast regions are more or less permeated by Malayan stock and influences, pile dwellings, both over water and on land form a characteristic feature of the scenery.  The village of Sowek in Geelvink Bay, on the northern coast of Dutch New Guinea, consists of thirty houses raised on piles above the water, connected with each other by tree trunks but having only boat connection with the shore.  Similar villages are found hovering over the lapping waves of Humboldt Bay, all of them recalling with surprising fidelity the prehistoric lake-dwellings of Switzerland.[591] The Papuan part of Port Moresby, on the southern coast of British New Guinea, covers the whole water-front of the town with pile dwellings.  In the vicinity are similar native pile villages, such as Tanobada, Hanuabada, Elevara and Hula, the latter consisting of pile dwellings scattered about over the water in a circuit of several miles and containing about a thousand inhabitants.  Here, too, the motive is protection against the attacks of inland mountain tribes, with whom the coast people are in constant war.[592]

The Malay fisherman, trader and pirate, with the love of the sea in his blood, by these pile dwellings combines security from his foe and proximity to his familiar field of activity.  The same objects are achieved by white traders on the west coast of Africa by setting up their dwellings and warehouses on the old hulks of dismasted vessels, which are anchored for this purpose in the river mouths.  They afford some protection against both fever and hostile native, and at the same time occupy the natural focus of local trade seeking foreign exchanges.

[Sidenote:  River dwellers in populous lands.]

When advancing civilization has eliminated the need for this form of protection, water-dwellers may survive or reappear in old and relatively over-populated countries, as we find them universally on the rivers of China and less often in Farther India.  Here they present the phenomenon of human life overflowing from the land to the streams of the country; because these, as highways of commerce, afford a means of livelihood, even apart from the food supply in their fish, and offer an unclaimed bit of the earth’s surface for a floating home.  Canton has 250,000 inhabitants living on boats and rafts moored in the river, and finding occupation in the vast inland navigation of the Empire, or in the trade which it brings to this port of the Si-kiang.  Some of the boats accommodate large families, together with modest poultry farms, crowded together under their low bamboo sheds.  Others are handsome wooden residences ornamented with plants, and yet others are pleasure resorts with their professional singing girls.[593] In the lakes and swamp-bordered rivers of southern Shantung, a considerable fishing population is found living in boats, while the land shows few inhabitants.  This population