VALLEYS AND GREAT LEVELS OF THE EARTH. 223 



with high mountains, through which the waters of the plain escape by a narrow outlet, 

 and form the celebrated fall of Tequendama. 



The great levels of the globe are however neither plateau nor table-land districts, but 

 vast territories which have only a very inconsiderable elevation above the sea. They 

 are classified, according to their respective physical conditions, into deserts and steppes. 

 The former, to use the words of Humboldt, are mere dead uninhabited plains, rendered 

 impracticable both by man and by the powerful influence of vegetation, and remaining 

 in all their primeval rudeness. The latter are more or less covered with grasses, or with 

 small plants of the dicotyledonous class, as well as with various forms of animal life, and 

 are only wearisome by their monotony and sameness. The word steppe is Russian, and 

 means a large extent of flat uninhabited country destitute of trees. It is synonymous 

 with the haiden or heaths of Germany, the landes of France, the savannahs and prairies 

 of North America, and the pampas and llanos of South America. It has been thought 

 sufficiently characteristic of the leading divisions of the globe, to say, that Europe has 

 heaths, Asia steppes, Africa deserts, and America savannahs. But such a classification 

 is manifestly incorrect, since Asia has large regions of true desert, as destitute of vegeta- 

 tion as the interior of Africa, while in the great Sahara of the latter there are savannahs 

 and pastures in the midst of barren and unfruitful spots, and all the European plains are 

 not heathy, nor all the American llanos grassy. Waiving generalizing, the levels of 

 these different regions will be best discriminated by a notice of them in detail, taking 

 Humboldt and Berghaus as the chief guides. 



The great Lowland of Europe extends from Paris to the frontiers of Asia, an immense 

 district, including part of northern France, the Netherlands, the north of Germany, the 

 entire kingdom of Prussia, with Poland, northern Turkey, and southern Russia, to the 

 terraces of the Ural and the waters of the Black Sea. This region, in general very level 

 and fertile, traversed by numerous navigable rivers, is the birth-place and surface land of 

 a large amount of modern civilisation. It is a vast plain with two grand declivities, 

 inclining north and south-easterly, which determine the course of the superficial waters 

 either to the Baltic Sea and the German Ocean, or to the basin of the Black Sea. As an 

 instance however of the little inclination of the surface in some places, a prevailing north 

 wind will drive the waters of the Stattiner-Haf into the mouth of the Oder, and give the 

 stream a backward flow for an extent of thirty or forty miles. At the northern confine of 

 the European lowlands, to a considerable distance from the shore, there is only a very 

 slight elevation above the sea, and hence extensive marshes are formed along the coast. 

 Holland is to a great extent so near the level of the waters as to require artificial means 

 to protect it from inundation ; and on approaching it, the trees and spires seem as if 

 planted upon the ocean. Notwithstanding the general fertility of this tract of country, 

 we meet with many spots incapable of cultivation, either wholly bare of vegetation, or 

 only producing a few grasses and dicotyledonous plants, which constitute true heaths and 

 landes. The moor and bog-lands of Westphalia are remarkable for their flat and table- 

 formed surfaces. From the middle of the Beerktanger Bog, heaven and earth seem to 

 mingle ; no tree, no bush is to be seen far as the eye can reach ; while here and there the 

 play of refraction magnifies to elephants the small and coarse-woolled sheep which find a 

 scanty subsistence on the Erica vulgaris, which vegetates on the scattered productive 

 portions of the bog. The infertile plains, for the most part sandy, occur chiefly in north 

 Germany and Prussia, those of Liineburg and its vicinity occupying a space of about 

 six thousand square miles. Similar sandy plains, interspersed with heaths and marshes, 

 occupy an extensive space in the south of France between the Gironde and the Pyrenees. 

 Towards its eastern extremity, the great level of Europe abounds with enormous tracts of 

 pasture land, which appear to have been rendered smooth by a long abode of the waters 



