32 TILLEKS OF THE GEOUND CHAP. 



Perhaps " lesson " is not a good word to use, for 

 we are apt to think of a lesson as something rather 

 dull and useless, and what these ancient peoples 

 learnt was to grow our daily bread, to get the 

 utmost out of the smallest patch of land. The 

 great things about food-growing, then, were learnt 

 round the Mediterranean basin, and in the Far 

 East, but some lessons were learnt elsewhere. We 

 know that long before the white man came to 

 America, either North or South, those countries 

 were inhabited by Indians, who knew far more 

 about plants than the African negroes, for instance. 



We spoke in the last chapter of the great 

 canals which some of those ancient peoples con- 

 structed, and also of their chief food-plants, which 

 were maize, or Indian corn, native beans and 

 different kinds of squashes and pumpkins. Not 

 only had they a greater variety of plants than the 

 African negroes, who generally have only one, but 

 they had some cleverness in growing them. Just 

 as in the countries round the Mediterranean, the 

 people here had in many places to struggle des- 

 perately against want of water, and, just as in the 

 Mediterranean region, the struggle made them clever 

 and ingenious, for it is quite often true that we learn 

 more when we work against big difficulties than 

 when everything is smooth and easy. 



The wisest and cleverest of these bygone 



