Note 122 — Chapter XXXIII · THE CULT OF NORTHERN AS OPPOSED TO SOUTHERN STARS.
Reading edition
On this point I am permitted to print the following extract from a letter received from my friend Sir John Kirk, K.C.B.:—"I send you a photo, taken in 1858, in the delta of the Zambezi, of a house built on high poles. The people there live in such houses. There is a ladder by which they mount, and all their belongings are kept above. Such houses I have since seen at the mouth of the River Rufiji, opposite the island of Monfia, to the south of Zanzibar. The reason in both cases for such a type of house is that the country at one time is flooded, and also to avoid mosquitoes. Similar structures are used, I am told, in Madagascar. At Lake Nyassa I believe there are village communities living in the lake, on artificial islands of piles."