VALLEYS AND GREAT LEVELS OF THE EARTH. 



235 



with their tall arrowy stems, and spiked or tassellated heads. Through the summer 

 months there is a distinct succession of dominant colours, the prairie appearing like a 

 carpet of purple velvet in spring, passing to one of red at midsummer, and gold in 

 autumn. 



Striking examples of these districts in the western world, upon a small scale, appear 

 upon the surface of the level land of Europe. Though this has already been cursorily 

 noticed, yet, as a home territory, it deserves another glance. The great space extending 

 from the shores of the Black to the coasts of the White Sea, and from the western foot of 

 the Ural Mountains to the English Channel and the Atlantic Ocean, presents savannahs, 

 primeval forests, barrens, morasses, and the most richly cultivated plains, alternating with 

 each other in a manner the most diversified, inhabited in some parts by nations of the 

 highest degree of intelligence, while in others nomadic tribes wander on its surface from 

 pasture to pasture. Surprise has often been excited at the enormous droves of oxen, 

 horses, and mules that feed upon the plains of America ; but the aggregate amount which 

 find pasture upon the European levels is not less prodigious, the number of oxen, cows, 

 and calves alone, sustained upon those flats of the Danube that are within the limits of 

 the Austrian monarchy, being estimated at upwards of thirteen millions. The south and 

 south-western parts of the vast Sarmatian plain, which includes nearly the whole of Eu 

 ropean Russia, has large districts of rich black loam of almost incredible fertility. This 

 is remarkably the case with the great wide plateau of Podolia and Volhynia, which abuts 

 against the outliers of the Carpathian Mountains. " The traveller," says a very attentive 

 observer, " who proceeds from the north to the south, sees it afar in the blue horizon, 

 hails it as a happy island after having traversed for days together monotonous fields of 

 sand, or the melancholy and gigantic morasses of Katner and Pinsk ; nor will he find 

 himself deceived in his expectations. He reaches a region as rich and fruitful as it is 

 kind and hospitable ; he finds lovely landscapes and beautiful tracts of country." The 

 origin of the peculiar black vegetable earth which distinguishes this southern margin of 

 the Sarmatian plain, has thus been intimated by Dubois. If we remember, he remarks, 

 that this territory was in early times covered with a splendid growth of trees that even 

 at the time of Herodotus the Scythians cultivated it, rooting up the woods, according to 

 their ancient usage, considering them as so many encroachments upon their tracts of 

 pasture that those nomadic races, the Tartars, who drove their numerous herds on this 

 great highway of Oriental nations, inherited the Scythian aversion to trees; if we 

 remember these facts, we shall not be surprised at finding that these beds of thick black 

 vegetable earth now form a mine of gold to the country. Westward, along the banks 

 of the Vistula, between the town of Thorn and the sea, we have plains celebrated for 

 their fertility and productiveness, which now fill the granaries of Dantzic with corn, and 

 which the German knights rescued from the waves in the thirteenth century, and ren 

 dered them integral portions of the continent by artificial mounds similar to those which 

 at present, to a greater extent, defend them from the waters of the Baltic. The dyke of 

 the plain of Marienburg, it is known, existed before the year 1397 ; and that of the plain 

 of Thorn has now an extent of forty-five German miles, without including its numerous 

 small windings and turns. Immediately contiguous are plains which remain in their 

 original condition, and are only in part used as pastures, being overgrown with bushes, 

 the haunts of wild animals. Here also lie the remains of one of the aboriginal forests 

 of Lithuania, a waste of wood consisting of firs, pine-trees, and oaks, which man has 

 seldom visited, and into the interior of which the axe of the woodman has never pene 

 trated. It bears the name of Niezearow, or the " unknown country," as the number of 

 stems which have fallen upon and across one another render it thoroughly impassable. 

 An abundance of moose deer, bears, lynxes, and wolves inhabit this forest region, in the 



