2 STEPPES AND DESERTS. 



broken strata of limestone, several hundred square miles in 

 extent, appear sensibly higher than the adjoining parts. 

 " Banks" ( 2 ) is the name given to them by the natives ; as 

 if language instinctively recalled the more ancient condition 

 of the globe, when those elevations were shoals, and the 

 Steppes themselves were the bottom of a great Mediterranean 

 sea. 



Even at the present time nocturnal illusion still recalls 

 these images of the past. When the rapidly rising and 

 descending constellations illumine the margin of the plain, 

 or when their trembling image is repeated in the lower 

 stratum of undulating vapour, we seem to see before us a 

 shoreless ocean. ( 3 ) Like the ocean, the Steppe fills the 

 mind with the feeling of infinity; and thought, escaping 

 from the visible impressions of space, rises to contemplations 

 of a higher order. Yet the aspect of the clear transparent 

 mirror of the ocean, with its light, curling, gently foaming, 

 sportive waves, cheers the heart like that of a friend ; but 

 the Steppe lies stretched before us dead and rigid, like the 

 stony crust ( 4 ) of a desolated planet. 



In every zone nature presents the phenomena of these 

 great plains : in each they have a peculiar physiognomy, 

 determined by diversity of soil, by climate, and by elevation 

 above the level of the sea. 



Tn northern Europe, the Heaths, which, covered with a 

 single race of plants repelling all others, extend from the 

 point of Jutland to the mouth of the Scheldt, may be re- 

 garded as true Steppes, but Steppes of small extent and 

 hilly surface, if compared with the Llanos and Pampas of 



