STAIRCASE FARMS OF THE ANCIENTS 



493 



than the Babylonian wonder. A bank of 

 50 terraces 10 feet high means a vertical 

 height of 500 feet. Many slopes have 

 more than 50 terraces, forming huge 

 staircases as high as the Washington 

 Monument, resting against the lower 

 slopes of mountains that tower for thou- 

 sands of feet above. It is only by taking 

 the ancient works out of their natural 

 setting that we can appreciate their gigan- 

 tic proportions. 



AN AMAZING SPECTACLE 



In the days when they were built, the 

 hanging gardens of Peru must have pre- 

 sented an amazing spectacle. All of the 

 terraced valleys, with their teeming popu- 

 lations, were probably as clean of trees 

 and shrubby vegetation as some of the 

 valleys still are, where people have con- 

 tinued to be too numerous to permit of 

 reforestation. Thus the terraces must 

 have stood out in much greater promi- 

 nence than they do now, when most of 

 them are abandoned and overgrown with 

 grass and bushes. In some of the valleys 

 in the vicinity of Ollantaytambo refor- 

 estation is well advanced and the terraces 

 now support large trees. 



Their memorials to the great were 

 agricultural terraces instead 



OE TOMBS 



The building of terraces was developed 

 into a fine art in Peru. The skilled labor 

 that zvas lavished in ancient Egypt on the 

 tombs of the sovereigns appears to have 

 been applied in Peru to the construction 

 of gardens of special workmanship for 

 raising the food of the royal family. The 

 ancient Peruvians made burial structures 

 for the mummies of their dead, but the 

 chief concern was for the living. The 

 tombs were of modest proportions and 

 were placed in caves or set high on the 

 rocky cliffs in the mountains, not in loca- 

 tions suitable for agricultural purposes. 



Pressure of population afforded, no 

 doubt, the underlying compulsion to go 

 forward with the construction of the ag- 

 ricultural terraces, and at the same time 

 tended to develop skill and emulation. 

 The natural interest in the permanence of 

 one's work, the desire to do it well, and 

 the wish to have it appear to advantage, 



doubtless were motives that spurred the 

 ambition of the prehistoric masons, as of 

 artists of the present day. The terraces 

 are beautiful, not only because the stones 

 are finely dressed and nicely fitted, but 

 because the work is fully in keeping with 

 its surroundings and admirably adapted 

 to its purpose. The function of a terrace 

 wall is to stand and hold the soil. Thou- 

 sands of the ancient terraces have stood 

 through the centuries, and the soil that 

 the ancient people laid down is still in 

 place. 



The work that the prehistoric builders 

 accomplished is still beyond our compre- 

 hension. Nobody has explained how it 

 was done or how it could be done. In- 

 deed, the modern Indians deny that it 

 ever was done, preferring to believe that 

 it was the work of enchantment. Huge 

 rocks that could have been moved only 

 with the greatest difficulty and by the 

 combined labor of hundreds of people are 

 nevertheless fitted together with incred- 

 ible nicety. To say that there are seams 

 too fine to insert knife-edges or tissue 

 papers leaves the story only partly told. 

 There is no room for inserting anything, 

 since the surfaces are actually in contact. 



With some of the finest work, at Ollan- 

 taytambo, the joints are in many places 

 too fine to be seen by the naked eye. A 

 lens becomes necessary to make sure that 

 there is really a seam and not merely a 

 superficial groove, or false joint. Pro- 

 fessor Bingham compares the fitting of 

 the stones to the grinding of glass stop- 

 pers into bottles, which is the best anal- 

 ogy thus far suggested. But how can 

 anybody credit the idea of grinding to- 

 gether with such accuracy the edges of 

 stones that weigh tons? Obviously the 

 edges must have been ground before the 

 stones were put in place. But the grind- 

 ing in itself does not seem so difficult to 

 explain as the shaping of the stones with 

 such accuracy that the ground edges fit 

 so absolutely together. 



THEIR MASTERPIECES WERE GARDENS 

 INSTEAD OE FORTRESSES 



That the masterpieces of the Megalithic 

 art have been described hitherto as for- 

 tresses instead of as gardens only shows 

 how far our own race is from appreciat- 



