Note 1273 — Chapter XVI · —Influences Of A Mountain Environment

Turning eastward, we find terrace agriculture widely distributed in Himalayan lands. The steep mountain sides of the Vale of Kashmir are cultivated thus to a considerable height. The terraces are irrigated by contour channels constructed along the hillsides, which bring the water for miles from distant snow-fed streams. Their shelf-like fields are green with fruit orchards and almond groves, with vineyards and grain fields.1273 The terraced slopes about the Himalayan hill-station of Simla (elevation 7100 to 8000 feet) feed the summer population of English, who there take refuge from the deadly heat of the plains. The mountain sections of the native states of Nepal and Bhutan present the view of slopes cut into gigantic stairs, each step a field of waving rice kept saturated by irrigating streams from abundant mountain springs. Farther north, where Himalayas and Hindu Kush meet, terrace agriculture is combined with irrigation in the high Gilgit valleys, and farther still along that mere gash running down from the Pamir dome, called the Hunza Valley. Here live the once lawless robber tribes of the Hunzas and Nagaris, whose conquest cost the British a dangerous and expensive campaign in 1892, but whose extensive terraces of irrigated fields and evidences of skillful tillage gave the whole country an appearance of civilization strangely at variance with the barbarous character of its inhabitants.1274