In old times, when Mexico was in the middle of a great lake, and the inhabitants were not strong enough to hold land on the shores, they were driven to strange shifts to get food. Among other expedients, they took to making little floating islands, which consisted of rafts of reeds and brushwood, on which they heaped mud from the shores of the lakes. On the banks of the lake of Tezcuco the mud was, at first, too full of salt and soda to be good for cultivation; but by pouring the water of the lake upon it, and letting it soak through, they dissolved out most of the salts, and the island was fit for cultivation, and bore splendid crops of vegetables.[7] These islands were called _chinampas_, and they were often large enough for the proprietor to build a hut in the middle, and live in it with his family. In later times, when the Mexicans came to be no longer afraid of their neighbours, the chinampas were not of much use; and when the water was drained off, and the city stood on dry land, one would have supposed that such a troublesome and costly arrangement would have been abandoned. The Mexican, however, is hard to move from the customs of his ancestors; and we have Humboldt’s word for it, that in his time there were some of these artificial islands still in the lake of Chalco, which the owners towed about with a rope, or pushed with a long pole. They are all gone now, at any rate, though the name of _chinampa_ is still applied to the gardens along the canal. These gardens very much resemble the floating islands in their construction of mud, heaped on a foundation of reeds and branches; and though they are not the real thing, and do not float, they are interesting, as the present representatives of the famous Mexican floating gardens. They are narrow strips of land, with a frontage of four or five yards to the canal, and a depth of one hundred, or a hundred and fifty yards. Between the strips are open ditches; and one principal occupation of the proprietor seems to be bringing up mud from the bottom of the ditch with a wooden shovel, and throwing it on the garden, in places where it has sunk. The reason of the narrowness of the strips is that he may be able to throw mud all over them from the ditches on either side. [7] Chalco was and is a freshwater lake, and here they had not even this to do.