The Southern Low Lands of the Great Continent, with their Secondary
Table-Lands and Mountains.
THE low lands to the south of the great mountain girdle of the old
continent are much broken by its offsets, by separate groups of
mountains, and still more by the deep indentation of bays and large
seas. Situate in lower latitudes, and sheltered by mountains from the
cutting Siberian winds, these plains are of a more tropical character
than those to the north; but they are strikingly contrasted in their
different parts—either rich in all the exuberance that heat, moisture,
and soil can produce, or covered by wastes of bare sand—in the most
advanced state of cultivation, or in the wildest garb of nature.
The barren parts of the low lands lying between the eastern shores of
China and the Indus bear a small proportion to the riches of a soil
vivified by tropical warmth and watered by the periodical inundations of
the mighty rivers that burst from the icy caverns of Tibet and the
Himalaya. On the contrary, the favoured regions in that part of the low
lands lying between the Persian Gulf, the Euphrates, and the Atlas
mountains, are small when compared with the immense expanse of the
Arabian and African deserts, scorched and calcined by an equatorial sun.
The blessing of a mountain-zone, pouring out its everlasting treasures
of moisture, the life-blood of the soil, is nowhere more strikingly
exhibited than in the contrast formed by these two regions of the globe.
The Tartar country of Mandshur, watered by the river Amour, but little
known to Europeans, lies immediately south of the Yablonnoi branch of
the Altaï chain, and consequently partakes of the desert aspect of
Siberia, and, in its northern parts, even of the Great Gobi. It is
partly intersected by mountains, and covered by dense forests;
nevertheless, oats grow in the plains, and even wheat in sheltered
places. Towards Corea the country is more fertile; in that peninsula
there are cultivated plains at the base of its central mountain-range.
China is the most productive country on the face of the earth; an
alluvial plain of 210,000 square miles, formed by one of the most
extensive river systems in the old world, occupies its eastern part.
This plain, seven times the size of Lombardy, is no less fertile, and
perfectly irrigated by canals. The Great Canal traverses the eastern
part of the plain for 700 miles, of which 500 are in a straight line of
considerable breadth, with a current in the greater part of it. Most
part of the plain is in rice and garden ground, the whole cultivated
with the spade. The tea-plant grows on a low range of hills between the
30th and 32d parallels of north latitude, an offset from the Pe-ling
chain. The cold in winter is much greater than in the corresponding
European latitudes, and the heat in summer is proportionally excessive.
The Indo-Chinese peninsula, lying between China and the river
Brahmapootra, has an area of 77,700 square miles, and projects 1500
miles into the ocean. The plains lying between the offsets descending
from the east end of the Himalaya, and which divide it longitudinally,
as before mentioned, are very extensive. The Birman empire alone, which
occupies the valley of the Irrawaddy, is said to be as large as France,
and not less fertile, especially its southern part, which is the granary
of the empire. Magnificent rivers intersect the alluvial plains, whose
soil they have brought down from the table-land of Tibet, and still
continue to deposit in great quantities in the deltas at their mouths.
The plains of Hindostan extend 2000 miles along the southern slope of
the Himalaya and Hindoo Coosh, between the Brahmapootra and the Indus,
and terminate on the south in the Bay of Bengal, the table-land of the
Deccan, and the Indian Ocean—a country embracing in its range every
variety of climate from tropical heat and moisture to the genial
temperature of southern Europe.
The valley of the Ganges is one of the richest on the globe, and
contains a greater extent of vegetable mould, and of land under
cultivation, than any other country in this continent, except perhaps
the Chinese empire. In its upper part, Sirhind and Delhi, the seat of
the ancient Mogul empire, still rich in splendid specimens of Indian
art, are partly arid, although in the latter there is fertile soil. The
country is beautiful where the Jumna and other streams unite to form the
Ganges. These rivers are often hemmed in by rocks and high banks, which
in a great measure prevent the periodical overflow of the waters; this,
however, is compensated by the coolness and moisture of the climate. The
land gradually improves towards the east, as it becomes more flat, till
at last there is not a stone to be seen for hundreds of miles down to
the Gulf of Bengal. Wheat and other European grain are produced in the
upper part of this magnificent valley, while in the south every variety
of Indian fruit, rice, cotton, indigo, opium, and sugar, are the staple
commodities. The ascent of the plain of the Ganges from the Bay of
Bengal is so gradual that Saharampore, nearly at the foot of the
Himalaya, is only 1100 feet above the level of Calcutta; the consequence
of which is that the Ganges and Brahmapootra, with their branches, in
the rainy season between June and September, lay Bengal under water for
hundreds of miles in every direction, like a great sea. When the water
subsides, the plains are verdant with rice and other grain; but when
harvest is over, and the heat is intense, the scene is changed—the
country, divested of its beauty, becomes parched and dusty everywhere,
except in the extensive jungles. It has been estimated that one-third of
the British territory in India is covered with these rank marshy tracts.
It was estimated by Lord Cornwallis, and confirmed by Mr. Colebrooke,
that a third of the East India Company’s territory is jungle.
The peninsula of Hindostan is occupied by the triangular-shaped
table-land of the Deccan, which is much lower, and totally unconnected
with the table-land of Tibet. It has the primary ranges of the Ghauts on
the east and west, and the Vendhya mountains on the north, sloping by
successive levels to the plains of Hindostan Proper. A trace of the
general equatorial direction of the Asiatic high land is still
perceptible in the Vendhya mountains, sometimes called the central chain
of India, and in the Saulpoora range to the south, both being nearly
parallel to the Himalaya.[34] The surface of the Deccan between 3000 and
4000 feet above the sea is a combination of plains, ridges of rock, and
insulated flat-topped hills, which are numerous, especially in its
north-eastern parts. These solitary and almost inaccessible heights rise
abruptly from the plains, with all but perpendicular sides, which can
only be scaled by steps cut in the rock, or by very dangerous paths.
Many are fortified, and were the strongholds of the natives, but they
never have withstood the determined intrepidity of British soldiers.
The peninsula terminates with the table-land of the Mysore, 7000 feet
above the sea, surrounded by the Nilgherry or Blue Mountains, which rise
2941 feet higher.
The base of this plateau, and indeed of all the Deccan is granite, and
there are also many syenitic and trap rocks, with abundance of primary
and secondary fossiliferous strata. Though possessing the diamond-mines
of Golconda, the true riches of the country consist in its vegetable
mould, which in the Mysore is 100 feet thick, an inexhaustible source of
fertility. The sea-coasts on the two sides of the peninsula are
essentially different: that of Malabar on the western side is rocky, but
in many parts well cultivated, and its mountains covered with forests
form a continuous wall of very simple structure, 510 miles long, and
rather more than 5000 feet high. On the coast of Coromandel the
mountains are bare, lower, frequently interrupted, and the wide maritime
plains are for the most part parched.
The island of Ceylon, nearly equal in extent to Ireland, is almost
joined to the southern extremity of the peninsula by sandbanks and small
islands, between which the water is only six feet deep in spring tides.
The Sanscrit name of the “Resplendent” may convey some idea of this
island, rich and fertile in soil, adorned by lofty mountains, numerous
streams, and primeval forests; in addition to which it is rich in
precious stones, and has the pearl oyster on its coast.
The Asiatic low lands are continued westward from the Indian peninsula
by the Punjab and the great Indian desert. “The Punjab, or country of
the five rivers,” lies at the base of the Hindoo Coosh. Its most
northern part consists of fertile terraces highly cultivated, and
valleys at the foot of the mountains. It is very productive in the plain
within the limits of the periodical inundations of the rivers, and where
it is watered by canals; in other parts it is pastoral. Lahore occupies
the chief part of the Punjab, and the city of that name on the Indus,
once the rival of Delhi, lies on the high road from Persia to India, and
was made the capital of the kingdom by Runjeet Sing. The valley of the
Indus throughout partakes of the character of the Punjab; it is fertile
only where it is within reach of water; much of it is delta, which is
occupied by rice-grounds; the rest is pasture, or sterile salt marshes.
South of the Punjab, and between the fertile plains of Hindostan and the
left bank of the Indus, lies the great Indian desert, which is about 400
miles broad, and becomes more and more arid as it approaches the river.
It consists of a hard clay, covered with shifting sand, driven into high
waves by the wind, with some parts that are verdant after the rains. In
the province of Cutch, south of the desert, a space of 7000 square
miles, known as the Run of Cutch, is alternately a sandy desert and an
inland sea. In April the waves of the sea are driven over it by the
prevailing winds, leaving only a few grassy eminences, the resort of
wild asses. The desert of Mekram, an equally barren tract, extends along
the Gulf of Oman from the mouths of the Indus to the Persian Gulf: in
some places, however, it produces the Indian palm and the aromatic
shrubs of Arabia Felix. It was the line followed by Alexander the Great
returning with his army from India.
The scathed shores of the Arabian Gulf, where not a blade of grass
freshens the arid sands, and the uncultivated valleys of the Euphrates
and Tigris, separate Asia from Arabia and Africa, the most desert
regions in the old world.
The peninsula of Arabia, divided into two parts by the Tropic of Cancer,
is about four times the size of France. No rivers, and few streams or
springs nourish the thirsty land, whose barren sands are scorched by a
fierce sun. The central part is a table-land of moderate height, which,
however, is said to have an elevation of 8000 feet in the province of
Haudramaut. To the south of the tropic it is an almost interminable
ocean of drifting sand, wafted in clouds by the gale, and dreaded even
by the wandering Bedouin. At wide intervals, long narrow depressions
cheer the eye with brushwood and verdure. More to the north, mountains
and hills cross the peninsula from S.E. to N.W., enclosing cultivated
and fine pastoral valleys adorned by grooves of the date-palm and
aromatic shrubs. Desolation once more resumes its domain where the
table-land sinks into the Syrian desert, and throughout the rest of its
circumference it descends in terraces or parallel ranges of mountains
and hills to a flat sandy coast from 30 to 100 miles wide, which
surrounds the greater part of the peninsula, from the mouths of the
Euphrates to the Isthmus of Suez. The hills come close to the beach in
the province of Oman, which is traversed by chains, and broken into
piles of arid mountains not more than 3500 feet high, with the exception
of the Jebel Okkdar, which is 6000 feet above the sea, and is cleft by
temporary streams and fertile valleys. Here the ground is cultivated and
covered with verdure, and still farther south there is a line of oases
fed by subterraneous springs, where the fruits common to Persia, India
and Arabia, are produced.
The south-eastern coast is scarcely known, except towards the provinces
of Haudramaut and Yemen or Arabia Felix, where ranges of mountains, some
above 5000 feet high, line the coast, and in many places project into
the ocean, sometimes forming excellent harbours, as that of Aden, which
is protected by projecting rocks. In the intervals there are towns and
villages, cotton-plantations, date-groves, and cultivated ground.
On the northern side of these granite ranges, where the table-land is
8000 feet above the sea, and along the edge of the desert of El Aklaj in
Haudramaut, there is a tract of land so loose and so very fine, that a
plummet was sunk in it by Baron Wrede to the depth of 360 feet without
reaching the bottom. There is a tradition in the country that the Sabæan
army of King Suffi perished in attempting to cross this desert. Arabia
Felix, which merits its name, is the only part of that country with
permanent streams, though they are small. Here also the mountains and
fertile ground run far inland, producing grain, pasture, coffee,
odoriferous plants, and gums. High cliffs line the shores of the Indian
Ocean and the Strait of Bab-el-man-deb—“the Gate of Tears.” The fertile
country is continued a considerable way along the coast of the Red Sea,
but the character of barrenness is resumed by degrees, till at length
the hills and intervening terraces, on which Mecca and Medina, the holy
cities of the Mahomedans, stand, are sterile wastes wherever springs do
not water them. The blast of the desert, loaded with burning sand,
sweeps over these parched regions. Mountains skirt the table-land to the
north; and the peninsula, between the Gulfs of Akabah and Suez on the
Red Sea, the Eliath of Scripture, is filled by the mountain-group of
Sinai and Horeb. Jebel Houra, Mount Sinai, on which Moses received the
Ten Commandments, is 9000 feet high, surrounded by higher mountains,
which are covered with snow in winter. The group of Sinai abounds in
springs and verdure. At its northern extremity lies the desert of
El-Teh, 70 miles long and 30 broad, in which the Israelites wandered
forty years. It is covered with long ranges of high rocks, of most
repulsive aspect, rent into deep clefts only a few feet wide, hemmed in
by walls of rock sometimes 1000 feet high, like the deserted streets of
a Cyclopean town. The journey from Sinai to Akabah, by the Wadee-el-Ain
or Valley of the Spring, is perfectly magnificent, and the site of Petra
itself is a tremendous confusion of black and brown mountains. It is a
considerable basin closed in by rocks, with chasms and defiles in the
precipices. The main street is 2 miles long, and not more than from 10
to 30 feet wide, enclosed between perpendicular rocks from 100 to 700
feet high, which so nearly meet as to leave only a strip of sky. A
stream runs through the street which must once have been a considerable
torrent, and the precipitous rocks are excavated into thousands of
caverns once inhabited—into conduits, cisterns, flights of steps,
theatres, and temples, forming altogether one of the most wonderful
remains of antiquity. The whole of Arabia Petrea, Edom of the sacred
writers, presents a scene of appalling desolation, completely fulfilling
the denunciation of prophecy.[35]
A sandy desert, crossed by low limestone ridges, separates the
table-land of Arabia from the habitable part of Syria, which the
mountains of Lebanon divide into two narrow plains. These mountains may
almost be considered offsets from the Taurus chain; at least they are
joined to it by the wooded range of Gawoor, the ancient Amanus,
impassable except by two defiles, celebrated in history as the Amanic
and Syrian Gates. The group of Lebanon begins with Mount Casius, which
rises abruptly from the sea in a single peak to the height of 7000 feet,
near the mouth of the Orontes. From thence the chain runs south, at a
distance of about twenty miles from the shores of the Mediterranean, in
a continuous line of peaks to the sources of the Jordan, where it splits
into two nearly parallel naked branches, enclosing the wide and fertile
plain of Beka or Ghor, the ancient Cœlo-Syria, in which are the ruins of
Balbec.
The Lebanon branch terminates at the sea near the mouth of the river
Leontes, a few miles north of the city of Old Tyre; while the
Anti-Libanus, which begins at Mount Hermon, 9000 feet high, runs west of
the Jordan through Palestine in a winding line, till its last spurs,
south of the Dead Sea, sink into rocky ridges on the desert of Sinai.
The tops of all these mountains, from Scanderoon to Jerusalem, are
covered with snow in winter; it is permanent on Lebanon only, whose
absolute elevation is 9300 feet. The precipices are terrific, the
springs abundant, and the spurs of the mountains are studded with
villages and convents; there are forests in the higher grounds, and,
lower down, vineyards and gardens. Many offsets from the Anti-Libanus
end in precipices on the coast between Tripoli and Beyrout, among which
the scenery is superb.
The valleys and plains of Syria are full of rich vegetable mould,
particularly the plain of Damascus, which is brilliantly verdant, though
surrounded by deserts, the barren uniformity of which is relieved on the
east by the broken columns and ruined temples of Palmyra (Tadmor). The
Assyrian wilderness, however, is not everywhere absolutely barren. In
the spring-time it is covered with a thin but vivid verdure, mixed with
fragrant aromatic herbs, of very short duration. When these are burnt
up, the unbounded plains resume their wonted dreariness. The country,
high and low, becomes more barren towards the Holy Land, yet even here
some of the mountains—as Carmel, Bashan, and Tabor—are luxuriantly
wooded, and many of the valleys are fertile, especially the valley of
the Jordan, which has the appearance of pleasure-grounds with groves of
wood and aromatic plants, but almost in a state of nature. One side of
the Lake of Tiberias in Galilee is savage; on the other there are gentle
hills and wild romantic vales, adorned with palm-trees, olives, and
sycamores—a scene of calm solitude and pastoral beauty. Jerusalem stands
on a declivity encompassed by severe stony mountains, wild and desolate.
The greater part of Syria is a desert compared with what it formerly
was. Mussulman rule has blighted this fair region, once flowing with
milk and honey—the Land of Promise.
Farther south, desolation increases; the valleys become narrower, the
hills more denuded and rugged, till, south of the Dead Sea, their dreary
aspect announces the approach of the desert.
The valley of the Jordan affords the most remarkable instance known of
the depression of the land below the general surface of the globe. This
hollow, which extends from the Gulf of Akabah on the Red Sea to the
bifurcation of Lebanon, is 620 feet below the Mediterranean at the Sea
of Galilee, and the acrid waters of the Dead Sea have a depression of
1300 feet.[36] The lowness of the valley had been observed by the
ancients, who gave it the descriptive name of Cœlo-Syria, “Hollow
Syria.” It is absolutely walled in by mountains between the Dead Sea and
Lebanon, where it is from ten to fifteen miles wide.[37]
A shrinking of the strata must have taken place along this coast of the
Mediterranean, from a sudden change of temperature in the earth’s crust,
or perhaps in consequence of some of the internal props giving way, for
the valley of the Jordan is not the only instance of a dip of the soil
below the sea-level: the small bitter lakes on the Isthmus of Suez are
cavities of the same kind, as well as the Natron lakes on the Libyan
desert, west from the delta of the Nile.