Litchfield enquirer., 1856-09-04
4ks rloatinr asrssns U rrsIiss.

Inc greater part of tho vegetables consumed ]! in Mexico are cultivated in the Chinamgas, called by Europeans floating gardens They are of two kinds soTae are movable, and fre- quentl driven up aud down by the Wind others firm, and fixed to the shore The for rier only can be termed floating, but the nu,lt ber. of these is daily lessoning.
 The ingenious invention of the chinsmpas is traceable to the end of the fourteenth century, and the idea was probably suggested to the Aztecas by nature itself. On the marshy banks of the lakes of Xoehimilcho and Calaco, tho waters, in their periodical swellings. throw up clods and mounds of earth, covered with grass and tangled roots. These masses, after floating for . long time up and down, the sport of every breeze, sometimes form into groups of small islets. A tribe, too weak and insi snifcant to establish any settlement on the mainland, took advantage of this portion of the soil thus acci- dentally placed at their disposal, and the pos session of which was not likely to be disputed. The most ancient chinampas were only turf mounds artifcially joined, and then titled and planted by the Aztecas These floating islands are found in every zone. Humboldt describes those he saw at Quito, in the River unayaqun, as being about twenty feet long, floating about in the middle of the stream, and full of the bam4 boo, the Pistia stateotes, and other plants, whose roots are knotty, and disposed to intertwine. They are also to be fonnd in the small lke called Laga di Agua Sofia of Tivoli near the Baths of Agrppa, composed of sulphur, of car4 bunate of lime, and of the leaves of the Ufca tAsraahs and shifting from place to place at every breath of wind.
 The industry of the Aztccan nation has brought to great perfection the idea suggested by the masses of earth broken off from the banks of the rivers. The floating gardens found by the Spaniards in great numbers, and many of which are still to be found in the Lake of Calaco, where sort of rafts formed of reeds, rushes and rough, pfiekly, tangling shrubs, and covered by the Indians with laycfof rich earth, impregnated with muriate of soda This salt is gradually extracted from the Soil by wa tering it with the water of the lake, and the ground is more or less fertilixed, according to the more or less frequent application of this lye flor such, even when salt, the watcr becomes by filtration through the soil. The chinampas sometimes contain | hutfor the Indian in charge of group of these floating gardens, which can be towed or inpelled by long poles at pleasure, from one side of the river to the other but most of those nov known by the name arc fixed and as this happens just in proportion to tho distance of the frcsll-water lake from tho salt-waier lake, many are to be found along the Vega, in the marshy soil between the Lake of Calaco and the Lake of Tezcuco. Each chi nampa forms parallelogram, three hundred feet long and about twenty in breadth, and Is separated from it's neghbor by narrow dilre. In these chinampas are cultivated beans, peas, capsicums, potatoes, artichokes, end great variety of other vegetables, and the borders are generally edged with flowers, and sometimes by little hedge of rosc-trees, Indeed, the beau ty of the scenery altogether makes boating excursions round them, especially those of Ista- calco and Lake Chapala, most delightful