reets 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
houses were at first low and mean, like cottages, made of any sort of
timber, and were built with mud walls and thatched with straw. But now
their houses are three stories high: the fronts of them are faced either
with stone, plastering, or brick; and between the facings of their walls
they throw in their rubbish. Their roofs are flat, and on them they lay
a sort of plaster, which costs very little, and yet is so tempered that
it is not apt to take fire, and yet resists the weather more than lead.
They have great quantities of glass among them, with which they glaze
their windows. They use also in their windows a thin linen cloth, that
is so oiled or gummed that it both keeps out the wind and gives free
admission to the l