decorative bar T HE area of our present work would be very limited if we understood the word Desert in its more rigorous signification; for we should then have only to consider those desolate wildernesses which an inclement sky and a sterile soil seem to exclude for ever from man’s dominion. But, by a license which usage authorizes, we are able to attribute to this term a much more extended sense; and to call Deserts not only the sandy seas of Africa and Asia, the icy wastes of the Poles, and th

decorative bar T O 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 underta

decorative bar T HE Sandy Deserts may with equal, nay, with greater accuracy, be entitled Salt Deserts, Rainless Deserts, Seas of Sand; for they present at one and the same time all these characters, and the three last, though less generally known than the first, are the most essential. The soil is generally covered with a thick stratum of sand; but in several places it also exhibits great walls of rock, and in others masses of rolled or shattered pebbles. The subsoil is nearly always of a gypse

decorative bar W HEN we have crossed the 18th parallel (or nearly so) of north latitude in Africa and the 30th in Asia—the southern boundary of the Rainless District—countries of extreme fertility and exuberant product succeed to the dreary solitudes we have hitherto traversed. At intervals, indeed, the traveller encounters some vast blighted and accursed area, where, for a part of each year, a deadly aridity prevails; but ever there comes a happy moment, even in these desolate wastes, when geni

decorative bar I n all parts of the world some regions exist where, owing to a concourse of favourable circumstances, the productive forces of Nature have been able to manifest themselves with an exceptional energy—where vegetable life, in particular, has acquired an extraordinary development. The rich soil is covered, over more or less extensive areas, with vivacious plants, robust and of great stature, which closely rooted, one against another, with intertwining and overarching boughs, sustain

——— I N 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