7 7© The National Geographic Magazine 



Peasant Girls in the Interior Carrj-ing Sweet Potatoes to Market 



terested in the terraced hillsides, popn^ 

 lated by simple peasants, living in 

 thatched cabins. There are valleys thou- 

 sands of feet djjep, which are terraced 

 to their summits'' in a manner quite as 

 wonderful as anything you will see in 

 Java or Japan. We Americans have not 

 yet reached the stage where we must 

 terrace and contour our hills, and it is 

 a very useful thing to see how the almost 

 perpendicular hillsides of this little island 



are all made to bear the crops which sup- 

 'port human life, for it gives one a goodl 

 iclea of the margin of possible unoccupied 

 land that still exists in America. 

 - The problem that the Portuguese in- 

 hgibitants of this colony have had to face 

 is' how to support on an island of 240- 

 square miles, a great deal of which is in 

 the air, so to speak, and absolutely un- 

 tillable, a rapidly growing population,, 

 now numbering 150,000, or 625 to every 



