86 HEATHS AND DESEKTS. 



are not founded either on the nature of things, cr the 

 genius of languages. The existence of a heath always sup- 

 poses an association of plants of the family of ericas; the 

 steppes of Asia are not everywhere covered with saline 

 plants; the savannahs of Venezuela furnish not only the 

 gramma, but with them small herbaceous mimosas, legu- 

 mina, and other dicotyledonous plants. The plains of Son- 

 garia, those which extend between the Don and the Volga, 

 and the puszta of Hungary, are real savannahs, pasturages 

 abounding in grasses ;* while the savannahs to the east and 

 west of the Eocky Mountains and of New Mexico produce 

 chenopodiums containing carbonate and muriate of soda. 

 Asia has real deserts destitute of vegetation, in Arabia, in 

 Grobi, and in Persia. Since we have become better ac- 

 quainted with the deserts in the interior of Africa, so long 

 and so vaguely confounded together under the name ot 

 desert of Sahara (Zahra) ; it has been observed, that in this 

 continent, towards the east, savannahs and pastures are 

 found, as in Arabia, situated in the midst of naked and 

 barren tracts. It is these deserts, covered with gravel 

 and destitute of plants, which are almost entirely wanting 

 in the New World. I saw them only in that part of 

 Peru, between Amotape and Coquimbo, on the shores of 

 the Pacific. These are called by the Spaniards, not llanos, 



* These vast steppes of Hungary are elevated only thirty cr forty 

 toises above the level of the sea, which is more than eighty leagues 

 distant from them. (See Wahlenberg's Flora Carpathianica.) Baron 

 Podmanitzky, an Hungarian nobleman, highly distinguished for his 

 knowledge of the physical sciences, caused the level of these plains to 

 be taken, to facilitate the formation of a canal then projected between 

 the Danube and the Theiss. He found the line of division, or the con- 

 vexity of the ground, which slopes on each side towards the beds of the 

 two rivers, to be only thirteen toises above the height of the Danube. 

 The widely extended pastures, which reach in every direction to the 

 horizon, are called in the country, Puszta, and, over a distance of many 

 leagues, are without any human habitation. Plains of this kind, inter- 

 mingled with marshes and sandy tracts, are found on the western side of 

 the Theiss, between Czegled, Csaba, Komloss, and Szarwass ; and on the 

 eastern side, between Debreczin, Karczag, and Szoboszlo. The area of 

 these plains of the interior basin of Hungary has been estimated, by a 

 pretty accurate calculation, to be between two thousand five hundred 

 and three thousand square leagues (twenty to a degree). Between 

 Caegled, Szolnok, and Ketskemet, the plain resembles a sea of sand. 



