[Sidenote:  Economy of level land for houses and villages.]

In all mountain regions where population has begun to press upon the meager limits of subsistence, level land and soil are at a premium.  In ancient Peru space was begrudged for the dead.[1293] Cities covered considerable space on the roomy intermontane plateaus; but in the narrow lateral valleys, houses and temples were built on rocks, in order to reserve every fertile spot for agriculture.[1294] The traveler notices the same thing throughout the Alps.  Compact villages cling to the mountain sides, leaving the alluvial hem of the stream or level glacial terrace free for the much needed fields.  Only in broad longitudinal valleys, like that of Andermatt, do the settlements complacently spread out their skirts, or on wide alluvial fans where transverse valleys debouch upon the plains.  The mountaineers of the Crimea construct their houses against the precipices, excavating into their face and building up the front, with stones, and thus reserve the gentler slopes for vineyards and gardens.[1295] In the Kangra, Kumaon, and Garhwal districts of the British Himalayas, the large Indian villages of the plains give place to small hamlets or detached homesteads, scattered here and there wherever occasional patches of soil on a hillside or in a narrow valley offer hope of sustenance.  These hamlets or dwellings are located on the sides of the mountains, because level spots which can be irrigated must be reserved for rice fields.[1296] The high site is also freer from malaria.

[Sidenote:  Perpendicular villages]

In the high Himalayan province of Ladak or Western Tibet, this principle of land economy reaches a climax.  All settlement is on the perpendicular.  The abrupt mountain sides are honey-combed with tombs, villages and Buddhist lamaseries in the detached localities where population occurs.  A pleasure walk through one of these Tibetan towns means a climb by steep flights of steps hewn out of the rock, varied by a saunter up ladders, where the sheer face of a cliff must be surmounted to reach the houses on a ledge above.[1297] Pictures of these recall forcibly the cliff-dwellings of the Pueblo Indians.  Even the important market city of Leh covers the lower slope of the mountain at an altitude of 11,500 feet, and from its height overlooks the cultivated fields in the sandy valley bed below, made fertile by irrigating streams from debouching canons.[1298] The Ladak villages always shun the plains.  The desire to economize level arable land does not alone dictate this choice of sites, however; the motive of protection against inundation, when the snows melt and the streams swell, and also, to some degree, against hostile attack, is an additional factor.  In the mountainous parts of overcrowded China, again, the food problem is the dominant motive.  In the rugged highland province of Shensi, a village of several hundred people covers only a few acres, and rises in closely packed tiers