Note 21 — STEPPES AND DESERTS.

p. 11.—“A connected Sea of Sand.”

As the Heaths formed of socially growing Ericeæ, which stretch from the mouth of the Scheldt to that of the Elbe and from the point of Jutland to the Harz, may be regarded as one connected tract of vegetation,—so the seas of sand may be traced through Africa and Asia, from Cape Blanco to beyond the Indus, or through an extent of 5600 geographical miles. Herodotus’s Sandy Region interrupted by Oases, called by the Arabs the Desert of Sahara, traverses almost the whole of Africa, which it intersects like a dried-up arm of the sea. The valley of the Nile is the eastern limit of the Lybian Desert. Beyond the Isthmus of Suez, beyond the porphyritic, syenitic, and basaltic rocks of Sinai, begins the Desert mountain plateau of Nedjid, which occupies the whole of the interior of the Arabian Peninsula, and is bounded to the west and south by the fertile and happier coast lands of Hedjaz and Hadhramaut. The Euphrates bounds the Arabian and Syrian Deserts towards the east. Immense seas of sand, (bejaban), cross Persia from the Caspian to the Indian Sea. Among them are the salt and soda Deserts of Kerman, Seistan, Beloochistan, and Mekran. The latter is separated from the Desert of Moultan by the Indus.