STEPPES AND DESERTS. 27 



tlie vicinity of the widely extended heat-radiating desert. Herds of 

 antelopes and swift-footed ostriches roam through these vast regions ; 

 but, with the exception of the watered Oases or islands in the sea of 

 sand, sonic groups of which have recently been discovered, and whose 

 verdant shores are frequented by nomade Tibbos and Tuaricks, ( 8 ) 

 the African Desert must be regarded as uninhabitable by man. 

 The more civilized nations who dwell on its borders only venture to 

 enter it periodically. By trading routes, which have remained un- 

 altered for thousands of years, caravans traverse the long distance 

 from Tafilet to Timbuctoo, and from Moorzouk to Bornou; ad- 

 venturous undertakings, the possibility of which depends upon the 

 existence of the camel, the "ship of the desert/' ( 9 ) as it is called in 

 the traditionary language of the eastern world. 



These African plains occupy an extent nearly three times as great 

 as that of the neighboring Mediterranean sea. They are situated 

 partly within, and partly in the vicinity of the tropics; and on this 

 situation their peculiar character depends. In the eastern part of 

 the Old Continent, the same geognostic phenomenon occurs in the 

 temperate zone. On the plateaux of Central Asia, between the gold 

 mountains or the Altai and the Kuen-lun, ( 10 ) from the Chinese wall 

 to beyond the Celestial mountains, and towards the sea of Aral, there 

 extend, through a length of many thousand miles, the most vast, if 

 not the most elevated, Steppes on the surface of the globe. I have 

 myself had the opportunity, fully thirty years after my South 

 American journey, of visiting a portion of them; namely, the Cal- 

 muck Kirghis Steppes between the Don, the Volga, the Caspian, and 

 the Chinese lake Dsaisang, being an extent of almost 2800 geogra- 

 phical miles. 



These Asiatic Steppes, which are sometimes hilly and sometimes 

 interrupted by pine forests, possess (dispersed over them in groups) 

 a far more varied vegetation than that of the Llanos and Pampas of 

 Caraccas and Buenos Ayres. The finest part of these plains, which 

 is inhabited by Asiatic pastoral tribes, is adorned with low bushes of 

 luxuriant, white-blossomed Rosacese, and with Fritillarias, Tulips, and 

 Cypripedias. 



As the torrid zone is characterized on the whole by a disposition 

 in all vegetation to become arborescent, so some of the Asiatic 



