Secondary Mountain Systems of the Great Continent—That of Scandinavia—
Great Britain and Ireland—The Ural Mountains—The Great Northern Plain.
THE great northern plain is broken by two masses of high land, in every
respect inferior to those described; they are the Scandinavian system
and the Ural mountains, the arbitrary limit between Europe and Asia.
The range of primary mountains which has given its form to the
Scandinavian peninsula begins at Cape Lindesnaes, the most southerly
point of Norway, and, after running along its western coast 1000 miles
in a north-easterly direction, ends at Cape Nord Kyn, on the Polar
Ocean, the extremity of Europe. The highest elevation of this chain is
not more than 8412 feet. It has been compared to a great wave or billow,
rising gradually from the east, which, after having formed a crest,
falls perpendicularly into the sea in the west. There are 3696 square
miles of this peninsula above the line of perpetual snow.
The southern portion of the chain consists of ridges following the
general direction of the range, 150 miles broad. At the distance of 360
miles from Cape Lindesnaes, the mountains form a single elevated mass,
terminated by a table-land which maintains an altitude of 4500 feet for
100 miles. It slopes towards the east, and plunges at once in high
precipices into a deep sea on the west.
The surface is barren, marshy, and bristled with peaks; besides an area
of 600 square leagues is occupied by the Snae Braen, the greatest mass
of perpetual snow and glaciers on the continent of Europe. A prominent
cluster of mountains follows, from whence a single chain, 25 miles
broad, maintains an uninterrupted line to the island of Megaree, where
it terminates its visible career in North Cape, a huge barren rock
perpetually lashed by the surge of the Polar Ocean, but from the
correspondence in geological structure it must be continued under the
sea to where it reappears, according to M. Boué, in the schistose rocks
of Spitzbergen. Offsets from these mountains cover Finland and the low
rocky table-land of Lapland: the valleys and countries along the eastern
side of the chain abound in forests and Alpine lakes.
The iron-bound coast of Norway is a continued series of rocky islands,
capes, promontories, and precipitous cliffs, rent into chasms which
penetrate miles into the heart of the mountains. These chasms, or
fiords, are either partly or entirely filled by arms of the sea; in the
former case, the shores are fertile and inhabited, and the whole country
abounds in the most picturesque scenery. Fiords are not peculiar to the
coast of Norway; they are even more extensive in Greenland and Iceland,
and of a more stern character, overhung by snow-clad rocks and glaciers.
As the Scandinavian mountains, those of Feroe, Britain, Ireland, and the
north-eastern parts of Iceland, have a similar character, and follow the
same general directions, they must have been elevated by forces acting
in parallel lines, and therefore may be regarded as belonging to the
same system.
The Feroe islands, due west from Norway, rise at once in a table-land
2000 feet high, bounded by precipitous cliffs, which dip into the ocean.
The rocky islands of Zetland, and those of Orkney, form part of the
mountain system of Scotland; the Orkney islands have evidently been
separated from the mainland by the Pentland Firth, where the currents
run with prodigious violence. The north-western part of Scotland is a
table-land from 1000 to 2000 feet high, which ends abruptly in the sea,
covered with heath, peat-mosses, and pasture. The general direction of
the Scottish mountains, like those of Scandinavia, is from north-east to
south-west, divided by a long line of lakes in the same direction,
extending from the Moray Firth completely across the island to south of
the island of Mull. Lakes of the most picturesque beauty abound among
the Scottish mountains. The Grampian hills, with their offsets and some
low ranges, fill the greater part of Scotland north of the Clyde and
Forth. Ben Nevis, only 4374 feet above the sea, is the highest hill in
the British islands.
The east coast of Scotland is generally bleak, though in many parts it
is extremely fertile, and may be cited as a model of good cultivation;
and the midland and southern counties are not inferior either in the
quality of the soil or the excellence of the husbandry. To the west the
country is wildly picturesque; the coast of the Atlantic, penetrated by
the sea, which is covered with islands, bears a strong resemblance to
that of Norway.
There cannot be a doubt that the Hebrides formed part of the mainland at
some remote geological period, since they follow the direction of the
mountain system in two parallel lines of rugged and imposing aspect,
never exceeding the height of 3200 feet. The undulating country on the
borders of Scotland becomes higher in the west of England and North
Wales, where the hills are wild, but the valleys are cultivated like
gardens, and the English lake-scenery is of the most gentle beauty.
Evergreen Ireland is mostly a mountainous country, and opposes to the
Atlantic storms an iron-bound coast of the wildest aspect; but it is
rich in arable land and pasture, and possesses the most picturesque
lake-scenery: indeed, freshwater lakes in the mountain valleys, so
peculiarly characteristic of the European system, are the great
ornaments of the high lands of Britain.
Various parts of the British islands were dry land while most of the
continent of Europe was yet below the ancient ocean. The high land of
Lammermuir and the Grampian hills in Scotland, and those of Cumberland
in England, were raised before the Alps had begun to appear above the
waves. In general, all the highest parts of the British mountains are of
granite and stratified crystalline rocks. The primary fossiliferous
strata are of immense thickness in Cumberland and in the north of Wales,
and the old red sandstone, many hundred feet thick, stretches from sea
to sea along the flanks of the Grampians. The coal strata are developed
on a great scale in the south of Scotland and the north of England; and
examples of every formation, with the exception of the muschelkalk, are
to be found in these islands. Volcanic fires had been very active in
early times, and nowhere is the columnar structure more beautifully
exhibited than in Fingal’s Cave and the Storr of Skye, in the Hebrides:
and in the north of Ireland a base of 800 square miles of mica-slate is
covered with volcanic rocks, which end on the coast in the magnificent
columns of the Giant’s Causeway.
The Ural chain, the boundary between Europe and Asia, is the only
interruption to the level of the great northern plain, and is altogether
unconnected with and far separated from the Altaï mountains by salt
lakes, marshes, and deserts. The central ridge may be traced from
between the Lake of Aral and the Caspian Sea to the northern extremity
of Nova Zemlia, a distance of more than 1700 miles; but as a chain it
really begins on the right bank of the Ural river, at the steppes of the
Kirghiz, about the 51st degree of north latitude, and runs due north in
a long narrow ridge to the Karskaïa Gulf, in the Polar Ocean, though it
may be said to terminate in dreary rocks on the west side of Nova
Zemlia. The Ural range is about the height of the mountains in the Black
Forest or the Vosges; and, with few exceptions, it is wooded to the top,
chiefly by the Pinus cembra. The immense mineral riches of these
mountains—gold, platina, magnetic iron, and copper—lie on the Siberian
side, and mostly between the 54th and 60th degrees of north latitude:
the only part that is colonized, and one of the most industrious and
civilized regions of the Russian empire. To the south the chain is
pastoral, about 100 miles broad, consisting of longitudinal ridges, the
highest of which does not exceed 3498 feet: in this part diamonds are
found. To the north of the mining district the narrow mural mass is
covered with impenetrable forests and deep morasses, altogether
uninhabitable and unexplored. Throughout the Ural mountains there are
neither precipices, transverse gorges, nor any of the characteristics of
a high chain; the descent on both sides is so gentle that in many places
it is difficult to know where the plain begins; and the road over the
chain from Russia by Ekaterinburg is so low that it hardly seems to be a
mountain-pass. The gentle descent and sluggishness of the streams
produce extensive marshes along the Siberian base of the range. To the
arduous and enterprising researches of Sir Roderick Murchison we are
indebted for almost all we know of these mountains: he found them on the
western side to be composed of Silurian, Devonian, and carboniferous
rocks, more or less altered and crystallized; on the eastern declivity
the mines are in metamorphic strata, mixed with rocks of igneous origin;
and the central axis is of quartzose and chloritic rocks.
The great zone of high land which extends along the old continent from
the Atlantic to the shores of the Pacific Ocean divides the low lands
into two very unequal parts. That to the north, only broken by the Ural
range of the Valdai table-land of still less elevation, stretches from
the Thames or the British hills, and the eastern bank of the Seine to
Behring’s Straits, including more than 190° of longitude, and occupying
an area of at least 4,500,000 square geographical miles, which is a
third more than all Europe. The greater part of it is perfectly level,
with a few elevations and low hills, and in many places a dead level
extends hundreds of miles. The country between the Carpathian and Ural
mountains is a flat on which there is scarcely a rise in 1500 miles; and
in the steppes of southern Russia and Siberia the extent of level ground
is immense. The mean absolute height of the flat provinces of France is
480 feet. Moscow, the highest point of the European plain, is also 480
feet high, from whence the land slopes imperceptibly to the sea both on
the north and south, till it absolutely dips below its level. Holland,
on one side, would be overflowed, were it not for its dykes, and towards
Astrakan the plain sinks still lower. With the exception of the plateau
of Ust-Urt, of no great elevation, situated between the Caspian and
Aral, and which is the extreme southern ridge of the Ural chain, the
whole of that extensive country north and east of the Caspian Sea and
around the Lake of Aral forms a vast cavity of 18,000 square leagues,
all considerably below the level of the ocean; and the surface of the
Caspian Sea itself, the lowest point, has a depression of rather more
than 83 feet.
The European part of the plain is highly cultivated, and very productive
in the more civilized countries, in its western and middle regions, and
along the Baltic. The greatest amount of cultivated land lies to the
north of the watershed which stretches from the Carpathians to the
centre of the Ural chain, yet there are large heaths which extend from
the extremity of Jutland through Lunebourg and Westphalia to Belgium.
The land is of excellent quality to the south of it. Round Polkova and
Moscow there is an extent of the finest vegetable mould, equal in size
to France and the Spanish peninsula together, which forms part of the
High Steppe, and is mostly in a state of nature.
A large portion of the great plain is pasture-land, and wide tracts are
covered with natural forests, especially in Poland and Russia, where
there are millions of acres of pine, fir, and deciduous trees.
The quantity of waste land in Europe is very great, and there are also
many swamps. A morass as long as England extends from the 52d parallel
of latitude, following the course of the river Prepit, a branch of the
Dnieper, which runs through its centre. There are swamps at the mouths
of many of the sluggish rivers in Central Europe. They cover 1970 miles
in Denmark, and mossy quagmires occur frequently in the more northerly
parts.
Towards the eastern extremity of Europe the great plain assumes the
peculiar character of desert called a _steppe_, a word supposed to be of
Tartar origin, signifying a level waste destitute of trees: hence the
steppes may vary according to the nature of the soil. They commence in
the river Dnieper, and extend along the shores of the Black Sea. They
include all the country north and east of the Caspian lake and
Independent Tartary; and, passing between the Ural and Altaï mountains,
they may be said to occupy all the low lands of Siberia. Hundreds of
leagues may be traversed east from the Dnieper without variation of
scene. A dead level of thin but luxuriant pasture, bounded only by the
horizon, day after day the same unbroken monotony fatigues the eye.
Sometimes there is the appearance of a lake, which vanishes on approach,
the phantom of atmospheric refraction. Horses and cattle beyond number
give some animation to the scene, so long as the steppes are green; but
winter comes in October, and they then become a trackless field of
spotless snow. Fearful storms rage, and the dry snow is driven by the
gale with a violence which neither man nor animal can resist, while the
sky is clear and the sun shines cold and bright above the earthly
turmoil. The contest between spring and winter is long and severe, for
“Winter oft at once resumes the breeze,
Chills the pale morn, and bids his driving sleets
Deform the day, delightless.”
Yet when gentler gales succeed, and the waters run off in torrents
through the channels which they cut in the soft ground, the earth is
again verdant. The scorching summer’s sun is as severe in its
consequences in these wild regions as the winter’s cold. In June the
steppes are parched, no shower falls, nor does a drop of dew refresh the
thirsty and rent earth. The sun rises and sets like a globe of fire, and
during the day he is obscured by a thick mist from the evaporation. In
some seasons the drought is excessive: the air is filled with dust in
impalpable powder, the springs become dry, and cattle perish in
thousands. Death triumphs over animal and vegetable nature, and
desolation tracks the scene to the utmost verge of the horizon, a
hideous wreck.
Much of this country is covered by an excellent but thin soil, fit for
corn, which grows luxuriantly wherever it has been tried; but a stiff
cold clay at a small distance below the surface kills every herb that
has deep roots, and no plants thrive but those which can resist the
extreme vicissitudes of climate. A very wide range is hopelessly barren.
The country from the Caucasus, along the shores of the Black and Caspian
Seas—a dead flat, twice the size of the British islands—is a desert
destitute of fresh water. Saline efflorescences cover the surface like
hoar-frost. Even the atmosphere and the dew are saline, and many salt
lakes in the neighbourhood of Astrakan furnish great quantities of
common salt and nitre. Saline plants, with patches of verdure few and
far between, are the only signs of vegetable life, but about Astrakan
there is soil and cultivation. Some low hills occur in the country
between the Caspian and the Lake of Aral, but it is mostly an ocean of
shifting sand, often driven by appalling whirlwinds.
Turkistan is a sandy desert, except on the banks of the Oxus and the
Jaxartes, and as far on each side of them as canals convey the
fertilizing waters. To the north, barrenness gives place to verdure
between the river Ural and the terraces and mountains of Central Asia,
where the steppes of the Kirghiz afford pasture to thousands of camels
and cattle belonging to these wandering hordes.
Siberia is either a dead level or undulating surface of more than
7,000,000 of square miles between the North Pacific and the Ural
mountains, the Polar Sea and the Altaï range, whose terraces and offsets
end in those plains, like headlands and promontories in the ocean. M.
Middendorf, indeed, met with a chain of most desolate mountains on the
shores of the Polar Ocean, in the country of the Samoides; and the
almost inapproachable coast far to the east is unexplored. The mineral
riches of the mountains have brought together a population who inhabit
towns of considerable importance along the base of the Ural and Altaï
chains, where the ground yields good crops and pasture; and there are
forests on the undulations of the mountains and on the plains. There are
many hundred square miles of rich black mould covered with trees and
grass, uninhabited, between the river Tobal and the upper course of the
Obi, within the limit where corn would grow; but even this valuable soil
is studded with small lakes of salt and fresh water, a chain of which,
300 miles long, skirts the base of the Ural mountains.
North of the 62d parallel of latitude corn does not ripen on account of
the biting blasts from the Icy Ocean, which sweep supreme over these
unprotected wastes. In a higher latitude, even the interminable forests
of gloomy fir are seen no more: all is a wide-spreading desolation of
salt steppes, boundless swamps, and lakes of salt and fresh water. The
cold is so intense there that the spongy soil is perpetually frozen to
the depth of some hundred feet below the surface; and the surface
itself, not thawed before the end of June, is again ice-bound by the
middle of September, and deep snow covers the ground nine or ten months
in the year. Happily, gales of wind are not frequent during winter, but
when they do occur no living thing ventures to face them. The Russian
Admiral Wrangel, who travelled during the most intense cold from the
mouth of the river Kolyma to Behring’s Strait, gives an appalling
account of these deserts. “Here endless snows and ice-covered rocks
bound the horizon, nature lies shrouded in all but perpetual winter,
life is a constant conflict with privation and with the terrors of cold
and hunger—the grave of nature, which contains only the bones of another
world. The people, and even the snow smokes, and this evaporation is
instantly changed into millions of needles of ice, which make a noise in
the air like the sound of torn satin or thick silk. The reindeer take to
the forest, or crowd together for heat, and the raven alone, the dark
bird of winter, still cleaves the icy air with slow and heavy wing,
leaving behind him a long line of thin vapour, marking the track of his
solitary flight. The trunks of the thickest trees are rent with a loud
noise, masses of rock are torn from their sites, the ground in the
valleys is rent into yawning fissures, from which the waters that are
underneath rise, giving off a cloud of vapour, and immediately become
ice. The atmosphere becomes dense, and the glistening stars are dimmed.
The dogs outside the huts of the Siberians burrow in the snow, and their
howling, at intervals of six or eight hours, interrupts the general
silence of winter.”[33] In many parts of Siberia, however, the sun,
though long absent from these dismal regions, does not leave them to
utter darkness. The extraordinary brilliancy of the stars, and the
gleaming snowlight, produce a kind of twilight, which is augmented by
the splendid coruscations of the aurora borealis.
The scorching heat of the summer’s sun produces a change like magic on
the southern provinces of the Siberian wilderness. The snow is scarcely
gone before the ground is covered with verdure, and flowers of various
hues blossom, bear their seeds, and die in a few months, when Winter
resumes his empire. A still shorter-lived vegetation scantily covers the
plains in the far north, and, on the shores of the Icy Ocean, even
reindeer-moss grows scantily.
The abundance of fur-bearing animals in the less rigorous parts of the
Siberian deserts has tempted the Russians to colonize and build towns on
these frozen plains. Yakutsk, on the river Lena, in 62° 1ʹ 30ʺ N. lat.,
is probably the coldest town on the earth. The ground is perpetually
frozen to the depth of more than 400 feet, of which three feet only are
thawed in summer, when Fahrenheit’s thermometer is frequently 77° in the
shade; and as there is in some seasons no frost for four months, larch
forests cover the ground, and wheat and rye produce from fifteen to
forty fold. In winter the cold is so intense that mercury is constantly
frozen two months, and occasionally even three.
In the northern parts of Europe the Silurian, Devonian, and
carboniferous strata are widely developed, and more to the south they
are followed in ascending order by immense tracts of the higher series
of secondary rocks, abounding in the huge monsters of a former world.
Very large and interesting tertiary basins fill the ancient hollows in
many parts of the plain, which are crowded with the remains of animals
that no longer exist. Of these, the most important are the London,
Paris, Vienna, and Moscow basins, with many others in the north of
Germany and Russia; and alluvial soil covers the greater part of the
plain. In the east, Sir Roderick Murchison has determined the boundary
of a region twice as large as France, extending from the Polar Ocean to
the southern steppes, and from beyond the Volga to the flanks of the
Ural chain, which consists of a red deposit of sand and marl, full of
copper in grains, belonging to the Permian system. This, and the immense
tract of black loam already mentioned, are among the principal features
of Eastern Europe.