BOOK V. 



THE POLAR DESERTS TUE MOUNTAINS. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE POLAR DESERTS. 



countries which enjoy an always elevated temperature, the 

 excess of their fertility is not much more favourable than 

 extreme dryness to the material and moral development 

 of man. There can be no doubt that the exuberant vegetation is 

 a potent cause of the insalubrity of the atmosphere. And thus it 

 comes that civilization, commerce, industry, labour, have only been 

 able to establish themselves and to make any considerable progress in 

 temperate or even cold countries, where man has found a climate more 

 healthy, but at the same time sufficiently unequal, and often 

 sufficiently inclement, to compel him to defend himself by various 

 means against the rigour of the atmosphere, and a soil capable 

 of furnishing him abundantly with the products necessary for his 

 wants, but on the condition that he gains them by intelligent and 

 persistent toil by the " sweat of his brow." 



When we arrive under a latitude or a thermometrical mean which 

 exceeds by some degrees that of England or France, we find the 

 inhabitants giving way to sloth and indolence ; their manners are at 

 once softer and yet fiercer, their passions more violent and their tastes 

 more fertile ; arts and poesy occupy them to the neglect of the exact 



