FLOATING GARDENS. 
109 
tliat the stems of many plants had been newly earthed up, with a 
few handluls of black mud, brought from the bottom of the lake. 
The general depth of the floating beds, or mass of reeds, and of 
earth taken together, was about two feet, and some of the beds were 
about seven feet broad. The general arrangement was a line of cu¬ 
cumber cones, bordering each edge, and one of water or musk melon, 
along the middle. The melon plants were peculiarly strong, and 
their cones were wound round with a fresh addition of confervae, and 
of other weeds, so as to give to each, five feet in diameter. The sea¬ 
son lasts for three months and a half, beginning in June. The fruit 
is seldom or never pulled in a small or girkin state, and differs in 
weight, when of a proper age for the market, from about eight or ten 
ounces to a pound and a quarter, or a pound and a half. From the 
first setting off the fruit to the time of pulling, seven or eight days 
are the ordinary period. The cucumbers yield about thirty full-sized 
fruit from each plant, or ninety to an hundred from each cone. The 
produce of the melons and the water-melons are numerically less ; 
hut the return of profit is at least equal. The seed of the melon is 
brought annually from Ballistan or little Tibert, and the first year 
yields fruit of from four to nine or ten pounds each, in weight; hut 
if the seed of this melon be resown, the produce the second year ex¬ 
ceeds not two or three pounds. On a more minute inquiry it would 
seem that the melons are sweet, and well flavoured, whilst the water 
melons are of the common quality. The melon, except when eaten 
to great excess, produces no derangement in the intestines, hut on the 
contrary sometimes causes purging. It is remarked that healthy 
people who live upon this fruit almost wholly during the season, be¬ 
come speedily fat, and the same effect is reported in regard to horses 
fed on the fruit at Bokhara. Thefts of whole floats are sometimes 
committed by persons joining in two or three boats to tow them off 
to distant parts of the lake in the night. The floating gardens are 
generally cut off from the body of the lake by a belt of floating reeds, 
which also answer, in some degree, the purpose of defending the 
cones against the effects of winds. Altogether this variety of farm¬ 
ing is highly profitable, and ought to be adopted in Europe as a 
great resource for raising food for man. 
