These gardens are made by driving stakes into the bed of the lake, long enough to project three or four feet above the surface of the water.

These stakes are placed at intervals in an oblong form, and are bound together by reeds and rushes twined in and out and across, until a kind of stationary raft is made, on which earth and turf are piled.

In this soil seeds are sown, and the crops of melons and other fruits raised in these fertile beds are extremely fine and abundant.
The magnificent chunar-trees are another very beautiful feature of the country.

They grow to a great height and girth, and so luxuriant and dense is their foliage that I have sat reading and writing for hours during heavy rain under one of these trees and kept perfectly dry.
The immediate vicinity of Srinagar is very pretty, and the whole valley of Kashmir is lovely beyond description: surrounded by beautifully-wooded mountains, intersected with streams and lakes, and gay with flowers of every description, for in Kashmir many of the gorgeous eastern plants and the more simple but sweeter ones of England meet on common ground.

To it may appropriately be applied the Persian couplet: 'Agar fardos baru-i zamin ast, hamin ast, hamin ast' (If there be an Elysium on earth, it is this, it is this).
The soil is extremely productive; anything will grow in it.