which the oriental housewife may have in the choice of vegetables on
going to the market, and the attractive manner of displaying such
products in Japan, are seen in Fig. 22.

We finally reached one of the terraced hillsides which rise five
hundred to a thousand feet above the harbor with sides so steep that
garden areas have a width of seldom more than twenty to thirty feet
and often less, while the front of each terrace may be a stone wall,
sometimes twelve feet high, often more than six, four and five feet
being the most common height. One of these hillside slopes is seen
in Fig. 23. These terraced gardens are both short and narrow and
most of them bounded by stone walls on three sides, suggesting house
foundations, the two end walls sloping down the hill from the height
of the back terrace, dropping to the ground level in front, these
forming foot-paths leading up the slope occasionally with one, two
or three steps in places.

Each terrace sloped slightly down the hill at a small angle and had
a low ridge along the front. Around its entire border a narrow drain
or furrow was arranged to collect surface water and direct it to
drainage channels or into a catch basin where it might be put back
on the garden or be used in preparing liquid fertilizer. At one
corner of many of these small terraced gardens were cement lined
pits, used both as catch basins for water and as receptacles for
liquid manure or as places in which to prepare compost. Far up the
steep paths, too, along either side, we saw many piles of stable
manure awaiting application, all of which had been brought up the
slopes in backets on bamboo poles, carried on the shoulders of men
and women.