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And the laborers sang:

Oh for a good flat land –
One with no hills to climb
Or slopes to struggle down.
A land without slides to dodge
Or rocks to crush.

A land filled with fields of food.
A land with rivers shallow
And easy to ford.

A land with low hills
For when the spring comes
With the spring floods.
Floods that foretold
Summer growth
And autumn harvest
On lands flat
And easy to plow.

Oh for a land of ease.

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And the builders sang:

Oh for a land of elevations –
A land of hills and slopes.

One with rock for walls
Rock to hew and rivers
Flowing with force.

Rivers of energy
To power wheels
To fill reservoirs.

Water with head
So that we can fill
cups, bowls, pots
sinks, tubs, baths
pools, spas and fountains.

Water that can flow
Through whole cities
And still flow out sewers
Into a sea with tides.
Tides to clean the bays.

Oh for a land to build
Cities up its slopes and grades.

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Without pumps and motors, either people did the work, or the flows of water and wind. But you needed to have water flowing down slopes for water’s power. Slopes are hard to walk up or down when carrying burdens and often it is man carrying burdens on stairs. Often men carry burden through mountains. Viaducts carried water through mountains and hills to reservoirs high enough in cities to flow down through buildings for flowing water and still run down into sewers that would carry waste out of the city.Water might also run mills that did work instead  rather than men doing it.

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Flat lands were easier to carry burdens across. Flat lands meant large fields too that were easy to tend and harvest. Flat lands also meant few land slides either to carry you off a hillside or crush you with rocks. Of course flat lands meant wide flood plains and being near rivers was good. So having low hills to build the farms on was good too.

What’s good for one is not for others.

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