The Desert World

BOOK I.

THE DESERTS OF EUROPE AND ASIA:--THE LANDES, THE DUNES, AND THE STEPPES.

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE DESERT IN FRANCE:--THE LANDES OF BRITTANY, 13

II. THE LANDES OF GASCONY, 24

III. THE DUNES, OR SAND-HILLS, 32

IV. WILD SCENES OF ENGLAND:--DARTMOOR AND THE FEN COUNTRY, 39

V. THE STEPPES:--THE DESERT IN RUSSIA, SIBERIA, AND TARTARY, 46

VI. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE STEPPES:--THE WILD HORSE AND THE CAMEL, 51

VII. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE STEPPES:--WILD RUMINATING ANIMALS, RODENTS, CARNIVORA, BIRDS, 64

VIII. INHABITANTS OF THE STEPPES:--TARTARS, COSSACKS, KALMUCKS, KIRGHIZ, MONGOLS, 78

BOOK II.. The Deserts of Sand:--the Deserts of Europe and Africa.

THE DESERTS OF SAND:--THE DESERTS OF EUROPE AND AFRICA.

I. THE RAINLESS DESERT--THE BED OF A SEA--THE DEAD SEA, 95

II. ARABIA DESERTA AND ARABIA PETRÆA, 106

III. THE NUBIAN DESERT--THE GREAT SAHARA--DESERTS OF AFRICA, 118

IV. PHENOMENA OF THE DESERT, 134

V. VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE DESERT--THE OASES, 148

VI. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE DESERT, 162

VII. THE MEN OF THE DESERT, 174

BOOK III.. Prairies, Savannahs, Pampas, and Llanos.

PRAIRIES, SAVANNAHS, PAMPAS, AND LLANOS.

I. WILD PLAINS OF THE OLD WORLD:--THE AFRICAN INTERIOR, 186

II. DESERTS OF THE NEW WORLD:--PRAIRIES, PAMPAS, LLANOS, 207

III. THE AUSTRALIAN INTERIOR, 231

IV. VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE AFRICAN PLAINS, 240

V. VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE PRAIRIES, PAMPAS, AND LLANOS OF THE NEW WORLD, 258

VI. FLORA OF THE AUSTRALIAN PLAINS, 273

VII. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE PRAIRIES OF THE OLD WORLD:--HERBIVOROUS ANIMALS, 281

VIII. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE PRAIRIES OF THE OLD WORLD--CONTINUED:--THE CARNIVORA, 300

IX. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE PRAIRIES OF THE OLD WORLD--CONTINUED:--BIRDS AND REPTILES, 317

X. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE PRAIRIES OF THE NEW WORLD:--HERBIVORA, INSECTIVORA, AND CARNIVORA, 328

XI. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE PRAIRIES OF THE NEW WORLD--CONTINUED:--BIRDS AND REPTILES, 353

XII. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE AUSTRALIAN PRAIRIES, 366

BOOK IV.. The Forests.

THE FORESTS.

I. THE VIRGIN FORESTS, 379

II. VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE FORESTS OF THE OLD WORLD, 397

III. VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE FORESTS OF THE GREAT ISLANDS, 412

IV. VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE FORESTS OF THE NEW WORLD, 428

V. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE TROPICAL FORESTS:--THE ELEPHANT--THE RHINOCEROS, 447

VI. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE VIRGIN FORESTS:--THE GREAT APES, 463

VII. THE ANTHROPOMORPHIC APES:--ORANGS--GIBBONS--CHIMPANZEES--GORILLAS, 472

VIII. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE FORESTS:--THE CEBIDÆ, OR MONKEYS OF AMERICA--THE LEMURS--THE SLOTHS--THE SQUIRRELS, 487

IX. MAN IN THE SAVANNAHS AND THE FORESTS:--ANTHROPOPHAGY, 502

X. MAN IN THE SAVANNAHS AND THE FORESTS:--THE SAVAGE RACES--THE NEGROES, 514

XI. MAN IN THE SAVANNAHS AND THE FORESTS:--THE MALAYS--POLYNESIANS--THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS, 526

BOOK V.. The Polar Deserts--the Mountains.

THE POLAR DESERTS--THE MOUNTAINS.

I. THE POLAR DESERTS, 543

II. ANIMAL LIFE AND VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE POLAR DESERTS, 555

III. THE INHABITANTS OF THE ARCTIC WILDERNESSES:--THE LAPLANDERS, SAMOIEDES, OSTIAKS, KAMTSCHATDALES, ESKIMOS (OR ESQUIMAUX), 569

IV. THE MOUNTAINS, 579

V. VEGETABLE LIFE AND ANIMAL LIFE IN THE MOUNTAINS, 598

THE DESERT WORLD.

BOOK I.. _the Deserts of Europe and Asia: the Landes, the Dunes, and the

THE DESERTS OF EUROPE AND ASIA: THE LANDES, THE DUNES, AND THE STEPPES.

CHAPTER I.

THE DESERT IN FRANCE:--THE LANDES OF BRITTANY.

To those whose imaginations have been kindled by glowing pictures of the African Sahara and the Arabian wilderness, it will be, perhaps, a matter of surprise to learn that even fertile and civilized Europe includes within her boundaries regions which are scarcely less cheerless or desolate, though, happily, of far inferior extent.

Thus, it would be possible for a Frenchman whom the engagements of business, the pressure of limited means, or the ties of home, prevented from undertaking any distant voyages, to obtain a vivid conception of the great Deserts of the World without crossing the confines of his own country.

In France, so richly cultivated, so laborious, and so blessed by genial Nature, there are, nevertheless, a few districts where her sons may wholly forget--may almost disbelieve in the existence of--her cities stirring with the "hum of men," her vineyards and her gardens, her grassy pastures, her prolific meadows, her well-ordered highways, and those "iron roads" which are the incessant channels of such restless energy, movement, and vigorous life.

Bare and desolate enough, and as yet unconquered by advancing civilization, are the mountains of France: among its gigantic ranges of the Jura, the Vosges, and the Cevennes, the traveller may still ascend precipitous rocks, may hearken to the deafening roar of foamy torrents, may contemplate with astonished gaze the masses of stone upheaved in some convulsion of the ancient world, may listen to the hoarse cry of the eagle, a s

"Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ringed with the azure world he stands."

In the Alps, profaned as they now-a-days are by noisy tourists; in the Pyrenees, whither Alpine clubs have not yet extended their encroachments, he who ascends some 8000 or 9000 feet may still wander among ice and snow which the sun's rays never loosen, and gather in his mind's eye a picture of the colossal peaks of Asia and the New World, of the virgin summits of the Himalaya and the Cordilleras. There you may follow with entranced vision the swooping wing of the lammergeyer; or trace the nimble feet of the shy chamois; or, like Manfred, muse and wonder, while

"The sunbow's rays still arch The torrent with the many hues of heaven, And roll the sheeted silver's waving column O'er the crag's headlong perpendicular."

Mayhap, if favoured by Fortune, you may even find yourself face to face, in the abrupt bend of some obscure ravine, with a bear, which, calm and unsuspicious, looks on as you pass by, as if he were ignorant of men, and had never heard the ringing echoes of the hunter's rifle.

It is less easy--in France, at least--to discover the old shadowy, leafy, almost impervious forest. The most celebrated--that of Fontainebleau--despite its enormous trees, its rudely broken surface, its stags and roebucks reserved for imperial sport, despite its few adders and problematical vipers, is now little better than a rendezvous for amateur artists and listless idlers. Its well-kept avenues resound with rapid wheels, and you can scarcely stir a step without finding the associations of the place interrupted by the stalls of vendors of cakes or the apparatus of itinerant gamblers. This profanation is surely to be regretted, for the Forest exhibits many landscapes of surpassing interest, as the rocks of Franchart, the glens of Apremont, and, above all, that Sahara in miniature, the sands of Arbonne. Nor would one willingly forget the historical memories which immortalize the famous palace where Francis I. received his after-time conqueror, Charles V.; where the wayward and half-insane Christina of Sweden listened with cruel delight to the groans of the murdered Monaldeschi; where Madame Du Barry lavished her shameless graces; where Pope Pius VII. lingered through two years of gilded captivity; and where Napoleon bade farewell to his dreams of universal empire.

Among the uncultivated regions of France we may mention the marshes of the Bresse, of Forez, of the Sologne, of Upper Brittany, and of Picardy. The greater portion of these marshes, owing to the peat which forms their bed, is vigorously and not unsuccessfully worked. They are traversed by trenches dug at right angles, and on whose border are placed the turf-cutter's little hut, and the furnace in which the peat is baked. Their lagoons, and the canals which connect them, swarm with flat-bottomed boats. Man, in a word, has taken possession of them; braving the unhealthy vapours which enfeeble his frame and shorten his life, he builds his squalid abode on the rising ground left uncovered by the waters. The largest of these peat-bogs are those of Montoir and the Grand Brière, near Savenay, in the department of the Loire Inférieure. They occupy a considerable area of a vast desolate plain, where a few lean sheep crop an insufficient food from the scanty herbage, and whose sole product is turf. "This country," says Jules Janin, "has no other harvest, no other wealth than its peat; neither fruit, nor flowers, nor corn, nor pastures, nor repose, nor well-being; the earth is wild, the sky one of iron. It is a region of stagnant waters, pestiferous exhalations, decrepit men, famished animals."

The swampy levels of Montoir form the natural vestibule to the Armorican Peninsula, which of all the French provinces has the longest and the most vigorously withstood the advance of civilization, its ideas, and its modern institutions, and has the most rigidly preserved its primitive character. There are many nooks and corners in Brittany scarcely changed in outward aspect or inner life since the remote days when it was a valued appanage of the English crown. They seem to have been plunged in a sleep of centuries, from which the shrill whistle of the steam-engine is only just awakening them. The country is undulating and broken; in the central districts it assumes quite a mountainous character. It is true that its heights are only of moderate elevation, the loftiest not exceeding 2000 feet; but they are barren, rude, and sombre in appearance. The coast is picturesque enough to delight the most zealous artist, bordered with high and abrupt cliffs, and lined, as it were, with a beach where the waters of the Channel ever break in floods of spray and foam, and where masses of rock lie scattered of immense size and the most fantastic forms.

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