UNIQUE VILLAGES.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 165, 14 July 1928, Page 11

UNIQUE VILLAGES.

Perhaps the most singular village in the world is that of Tupuselei, in New Guinea. Here the houses are all supported on piles, and stand right out in the ocean, some considerable distance from the shore. The object of this strange j»ositiou is to protect the inhabitants aginst sudden attacks of the dreaded head-hunters, who are always on the look-out for victims. Other villages in this happy land are perched | up in all but inaccessible trees, for the same weighty reason.

Another curious place is a town without a name on one of the arms of Lake Huron. It consists of some five hundred wooden huts. During the summer these little dwellings are hidden away in a clearing on shore, and the town contains not a single inhabitant. But on the arrival of winter, when the lake is frozen over with a thick coating of ice, the owners of the huts arrive and proceed to move their houses out on to the mi: face of the lake. The floors of the huts are taken up and holes cut through the i<-e. Through these holes the resident- il.-li. carrying on their operation* until the spring releases the lake from it- icy

bounds. When tlii-s extraordinary town is once more broken uj>. tlit- >-baiitie- go

back to tlieir resting place a'id the fi-hcr-nieu scatter over the country.