Note 1275 — Chapter XVI · —Influences Of A Mountain Environment

North of the outer Himalayan range, near the sources of the Indus and Sutlej rivers in Ladak or Western Tibet, this same form of cultivation has been resorted to by the retarded and isolated Mongolian inhabitants. Here at an altitude of 11,000 feet or more (3354 meters), along mountain ranges of primitive rock yielding only a scant and sterile soil, terraces are laboriously constructed; their surfaces are manured with burnt remains of animal excrements, which must first serve as fuel in this timberless land before they are applied to the ground. In this stronghold of Buddhism almost every lamasery has its terraced fields yielding good crops of grain and fruit.1275 In the densely populated Sze Chuan province of western China, cultivation has climbed from the fertile basins of the Min and upper Yangtze rivers far up the surrounding mountains, where it is carried on terraces to the foot of vertical cliffs.1276 Farther north where the mountain province of Shensi occupies the rise of land from the Chinese lowlands to the central highlands of Asia, terraces planted with wheat or other grains cover the mountain slopes.1277