When these young women reached a marriageable age, the most beautiful among them were chosen to become brides of the ruler, others were given by him as wives to the higher nobles, while others remained in the service of religion, vowing perpetual virginity, and who were held in the very highest respect. =Human Sacrifice.= Human sacrifice was of rare event in Peru. This only occurred to mark some great public affair. The victims usually were children and beautiful maidens. They were selected from the various parts of the empire and they travelled in regular convoys, the children too young to walk being carried by their mothers. As they journeyed they received the adoration of all the people on the way. In offering them up as sacrifices, the priests strangled them or broke their necks with a stone implement, while with some the throat was cut and blood from the wound sprinkled on their faces. In some cases the hearts of the victims were plucked out and offered to the divinity. These sacrifices were never served up at feasts, as in Mexico, but all were buried in special cemeteries. Human sacrifice never came to be a great part of the religion of Peru under the Incas, as was the case in Mexico, and where it did occur there was never any cannibalism with it. =Industries.= Agriculture was the main occupation of the ancient Peruvians. Every one was required to put in some time in agricultural pursuits unless excused by special permit by the authorities. The land was divided into three parts, one portion was reserved for the Sun, to be used to produce revenue to care for the temples and the priests and others connected with the religion, a second part was reserved for the state, and the third part was given over to the people for their own use, each head of a family receiving a plot and additional plots for each unmarried child. There were no animals for use in the fields, so the people had all the work to do. The men used a digging-stick, which was a long stake with a sharpened point, sometimes having the point covered with copper, and with a cross stick about a foot up from the pointed end for a foot-rest for digging with the foot. The men would turn up the soil with their digging-sticks and the women would follow and break up the clods with a rake and pull out the weeds. The men unable to dig and the boys acted as scare-crows or used blow-guns and slings to keep the birds away. Every bit of ground was cultivated and to add to this terraces were formed on the hillsides by means of parallel walls of rough stones, one above the other. To add further to the area of tillable land, where the soil was rocky and dry they would make excavations, sometimes as much as an acre in extent and sunk to the depth of fifteen or twenty feet, and would line these with walls of adobe, sun-dried bricks. The bottom of the pits probably reached down to where there was some moisture and they were prepared for cultivation as the other fields.