The Nephites were agriculturists and stock raisers. It may be recalled here that the Indians, their descendants, are credited with having developed twenty-five kinds of crops, among which are corn or maize, peanuts, beans, squashes, pumpkins, sunflowers, gourds and the exceedingly important cotton plant. They understood seed selection, irrigation and cultivation. Prescott says of the Peruvians:
“Terraces were raised upon the steep sides of the Cordillera; and, as the different elevations had the effect of difference of latitude, they exhibited in regular gradation every variety of vegetable form, from the stimulated growth of the tropics to the temperate products of a northern clime; while flocks of llamas—the Peruvian sheep—wandered with their shepherds over the broad, snow-covered wastes on the crests of the sierra, which rose beyond the limits of cultivation. An industrious population settled along the lofty regions of the plateaus, and towns and hamlets, clustering amidst orchards and wide-spreading gardens, seemed suspended in the air far above the ordinary elevation of the clouds.”