The great lowland of Europe lies toward the east, embracing the vast
continental area of Russia, and sending out arms westward round the Gulf
of Bothnia and the Swedish side of the Baltic, and through North Germany
and Denmark, to form the lowlands of Holland and Belgium and of Western
France, along the shores of the Bay of Biscay, as far as the rise of the
Pyrenees.
The vast central area of the Russian lowland has almost everywhere the
same character, _woods and marshes_ alternating with cultivated land,
affording a superfluity of grain, which is sent down by the rivers to
the seaports of the Baltic and the Black Sea; but along its northern
border, next the icy Arctic Sea, lie the moss-covered swamps called the
_Tundras_, the soil of which is never thawed for more than a yard’s
depth; all its southern margin toward the Black Sea and the Caspian is a
treeless _steppe_, over which at some seasons the grasses shoot up above
a man’s height, concealing the pasturing herds.