[Sidenote:  In ancient Peru.]

Terrace tillage is rare in new countries of extensive plains, like the United States and Canada, where the level lands still suffice for the agricultural needs of the people; but in the confined mountain basins and valleys which made up the Inca’s territory in ancient Peru, every available natural field was utilized for cultivation, and terraces brought the obstinate mountain sides under the dominion of the Andean peasant.  They were constructed, a hundred or more in number, rising 1000 or 1500 feet above the floor of the highland valley, contracting in width as they rose, till the uppermost one was a narrow shelf only two feet broad.  These were extended by communal labor year after year, with increase of population, just as to-day in Java and the neighboring islands, and became the property of the Inca.  Streams from the higher slopes were conducted in canals and distributed from terrace to terrace, to irrigate and fertilize.  These terraces therefore yielded the best crops of potatoes, maize and pulse.  The cultivable area was further extended by floating gardens, consisting of rafts covered with earth, which floated on the surface of lakes.[1278] They existed in ancient Mexico also,[1279] and are used to-day in the lakes and streams of Tibet and Kashmir[1280] and the rivers of overcrowded China.

[Sidenote:  Terrace agriculture in mountainous islands.]

Mountainous islands, born of volcanic forces or the partial submergence of coastal ranges, have steep surfaces and scant lowlands.  Their inhabitants command limited area at best.  Driven to agriculture by their isolation, drawn to it by the favorable oceanic climate, such islands develop terrace tillage in its most pronounced form.  On the precipitous pitch of Teneriffe, every particle of alluvial soil is collected to make gardens.  Long lines of camels, laden with boxes of earth, may be seen coming almost daily into the town of Santa Cruz, bringing soil for the terraces.[1281] This is desperate agriculture.  Irrigated terraces scar the steep slopes of many Polynesian islands.[1282] They are highly developed among the Malay Battaks of Sumatra, especially for rice culture.[1283] In Java, Bali and Lombok they reach a perfection hardly equalled elsewhere in the world.  In Java they begin at an altitude of 1000 feet, cutting main and branch valleys into amphitheaters, and covering hundreds of square miles.[1284] On the volcanic slopes of Lombok the terrace plots vary from many acres to a few square yards, according to the grade, while a complete system of irrigation uses every brook to water the terraces.  Here as in Java the work began at a very early period, when it was probably introduced among the native Malays by Brahmans from India.[1285] Japan, two-thirds of whose area is mountainous, has terraced its steep valley walls often up to 2000 feet or more, and utilized every patch of ground susceptible of tillage.[1286]

[Sidenote:  Among mountain savages.]