Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/181

Rh jerks it up the trunk with his hands, a little at a time, drawing his legs up after it. Ellis describes the Tahitian boys tying their feet together, four or five inches apart, with a piece of palm-bark, and with the aid of this fetter going up the cocoa-palms to gather the nuts; and Backhouse mentions a different plan in use in opossum-catching in Van Diemen's Land. The native women who climbed the tall, smooth gum-trees did not cut notches after the Australian plan, except where the bark was rough and loose near the ground. Having got over this part by the notches, they threw round the tree a rope twice as long as was necessary to encompass it, put their hatchets on their bare, cropped heads, and placing their feet against the tree and grasping the rope with their hands, they hitched it up by jerks, and pulled themselves up the enormous trunk almost as fast as a man would mount a ladder.

The ancient Mexicans' art of turning the waters of their lakes to account by constructing floating gardens upon them, has been abandoned, apparently on account of the sinking of the waters, which are now shallow enough to allow the mud gardens to rest upon the bottom. At the time of Humboldt's visit to Mexico, however, there were still some to be seen, though their number was fast decreasing. The floating gardens, or chinampas, which the Spaniards found in great numbers, and several of which still existed in his time on the lake of Chalco, were rafts formed of reeds, roots, and branches of underwood. The Indians laid on the tangled mass quantities of the black mould, which is naturally impregnated with salt, but by washing with lake water is made more fertile. "The chinampas," he continues, "sometimes even carry the hut of the Indian who serves as guard for a group of floating gardens. They are towed, or propelled with long poles, to move them at will from shore to shore." Though floating gardens are no longer to be met with in Mexico, they are still in full use in the shallow waters of Cashmere. They are made of mould heaped on masses of the stalks of aquatic plants, and will mostly bear a man's weight, though the fruit is