Note 21 — ON STEPPES AND DESERTS.

110p. 9.—“One connected sea of sand.”

As we may regard the social Erica as furnishing one continuous vegetable covering spread over the earth’s surface, from the mouth of the Scheldt to the Elbe, and from the extremity of Jutland to the Harz mountains, so may we likewise trace the sea of sand continuously through Africa and Asia, from Cape Blanco to the further side of the Indus, over an extent of 5,600 miles. The sandy region mentioned by Herodotus, which the Arabs call the Desert of Sahara, and which is interrupted by oases, traverses the whole of Africa like a dried arm of the sea. The valley of the Nile is the eastern boundary of the Lybian desert. Beyond the Isthmus of Suez and the porphyritic, syenitic, and greenstone rocks of Sinai begins the Desert mountain plateau of Nedschd, which occupies the whole interior of the Arabian Peninsula, and is bounded to the west and south by the fruitful and more highly favoured coast-lands of Hedschaz and Hadhramaut. The Euphrates forms the eastern boundary of the Arabian and Syrian desert. The whole of Persia, from the Caspian Sea to the Indian Ocean, is intersected by immense tracts of sand (bejaban), among which we may reckon the soda and potash Deserts of Kerman, Seistan, Beludschistan, and Mekran. The last of these barren wastes is separated by the Indus from the Desert of Moultan.