The streets be appointed and set forth very commodious and handsome, both for carriage and also against the winds. The streets be full twenty foot broad. The houses be of fair and gorgeous buildings: and in the street-side, they stand joined together in a long row through the whole street, without any partition or separation. On the backside of the houses, through the whole length of the street, lie large gardens which be closed in round about with the back parts of the street. Every house hath two doors, one to the street, and a postern door on the backside into the garden. These doors be made with two leaves, never locked nor bolted: so easy to be opened, that they will follow the least drawing of a finger, and shut again of themselves. They set great store by their gardens. In these they have vineyards and all manner of fruits, herbs, and flowers, so pleasant, so well furnished, and so finely kept, that I never saw anything more fruitful, nor better trimmed in any place: and their study and diligence herein cometh not only of pleasure, but also of a certain strife and contention that is betwixt street and street, concerning the trimming, husbanding, and flourishing, of their gardens, every man for his own part: and verily, you shall not lightly find in all the City anything that is more commodious, either for the profit of the citizens, or for pleasure. And therefore it may seem, that the first founder of the city minded nothing more so much as he did these gardens. They say, that King Utopus himself, even at his first beginning, appointed and drew forth the platform of the City into this fashion and figure that it hath now, by his gallant garnishing and the beautiful setting forth of it. Whereunto he saw that one's man age would not suffice, that he left to his posterity. Their chronicles, which they keep written with all diligent circumspection, containing the history of 1760 years, even from the first conquest of the Island, record and witness, that the houses in the beginning were very low, and likely homely cottages, or poor shepherds' houses, made at all adventures of every rude piece of wood that came first to hand: with mud-walls, and ridged roofs thatched over with straw. But now the houses be curiously builded after a gorgeous and gallant sort, with three stories, one over another. The outside of the walls be made of either hard flint, or of plaster, or else of brick: and the inner sides be well strengthened with timber-work. The roofs be plain and flat, covered with a certain kind of plaster that is of no cost: and yet so tempered that no fire can hurt or perish it: and it withstandeth the violence of the weather, better than any lead.