of that small river cannot be conveyed, they have great cisterns for
receiving the rain-water, which supplies the want of the other. The town
is compassed with a high and thick wall, in which there are many towers
and forts; there is also a broad and deep dry ditch, set thick with
thorns, cast round three sides of the town, and the river is instead of
a ditch on the fourth side. The streets are very convenient for all
carriage, and are well sheltered from the winds. Their buildings are
good, and are so uniform, that a whole side of a street looks like one
house. The streets are twenty feet broad; there lie gardens behind all
their houses; these are large but enclosed with buildings, that on all
hands face the streets; so that every house has both a door to the
street, and a back door to the garden. Their doors have all two leaves,
which, as they are easily opened, so they shut of their own accord; and
there being no property among them, every man may freely enter into any
house whatsoever. At every ten years end they shift their houses by
lots. They cultivate their gardens with great care, so that they have
both vines, fruits, herbs, and flowers in them; and all is so well
ordered, and so finely kept, that I never saw gardens anywhere that were
both so fruitful and so beautiful as theirs. And this humour of ordering
their gardens so well, is not only kept up by the pleasure they find in
it, but also by an emulation between the inhabitants of the several
streets, who vie with each other; and there is indeed nothing belonging
to the whole town that is both more useful and more pleasant. So that he
who founded the town, seems to have taken care of nothing more than of
their gardens; for they say, the whole scheme of the town was designed
at first by Utopus, but he left all that belonged to the ornament and
improvement of it, to be added by those that should come after him, that
being too much for one man to bring to perfection. Their records, that
contain the history of their town and state, are preserved with an exact
care, and run backwards 1,760 years. From these it appears that their