Direction of the Forces that raised the Continents—Proportion of Land and Water—Size of the Continents and Islands—Outline of the Land—Extent of Coasts, and proportion they bear to the Areas of the Continents—Elevation of the Continents—Forms of Mountains—Forms of Rocks—Connection between Physical Geography of Countries and their Geological Structure—Contemporaneous Upheaval of parallel Mountain Chains—Parallelism of Mineral Veins or Fissures—Mr. Hopkins’s Theory of Fissures—Parallel Chains similar in Structure—Interruptions in Continents and Mountain Chains—Form of the Great Continent—The High Lands of the Great Continent—The Atlas, Spanish, French, and German Mountains—The Alps, Balkan, and Apennines—Glaciers—Geological Notice.

At the end of the tertiary period the earth was much in the same state as it is at present with regard to the distribution of land and water. The preponderance of land in the northern hemisphere indicates a prodigious accumulation of internal energy under these latitudes at a very remote geological period. The forces that raised the two great continents above the deep, when viewed on a wide scale, must evidently have acted at right angles to one another, nearly parallel to the equator in the old continent, and in the direction of the meridian in the new; yet the structure of the opposite coasts of the Atlantic points at some connection between the two.

The mountains, from their rude and shattered condition, bear testimony to repeated violent convulsions similar to modern earthquakes; while the high table-lands, and that succession of terraces by which the continents sink down from their mountain-ranges to the plains, to the ocean, and even below it, show also that the land must have been heaved up occasionally by slow and gentle pressure, such as appears now to be gradually elevating the coast of Scandinavia and many other parts of the earth. The periods in which these majestic operations were effected must have been incalculable, since the dry land occupies an area of nearly 38,000,000 of square miles.

The ocean covers nearly three-fourths of the surface of the globe, but the distribution is very unequal, whether it be considered with regard to the northern and southern hemispheres, or the eastern and western. Independently of Victoria Land, whose extent is unknown, the quantity of land in the northern hemisphere is three times greater than in the southern. In the latter it occupies only one-sixteenth of the space between the Antarctic Circle and the thirtieth parallel of south latitude, while between the corresponding parallels in the northern hemisphere the extent of land and water is nearly equal. If the globe be divided into two hemispheres by a meridian passing through the island of Teneriffe, the land will be found to predominate greatly on the eastern side of that line, and the water on the western. In consequence of the very unequal arrangement of the solid and liquid portions of the surface of the earth, England is nearly in the centre of the greatest mass of land, and its antipode, the island of New Zealand, is in the centre of the greatest mass of water; so that a person raised above Falmouth, which is almost the central point, till he could perceive a complete hemisphere, would see the greatest possible expanse of land, while, were he elevated to the same height above New Zealand, he would see the greatest possible extent of ocean. In fact, only one twenty-seventh of the land has land directly opposite to it in the opposite hemisphere, and under the equator five-sixths of the circumference of the globe is water. It must, however, be observed that there is still an unexplored region within the Antarctic Circle more than twice the size of Europe, and of the north polar basin we know nothing. With regard to the land alone, the great continent has an area of about 24,000,000 square miles, while the extent of America is 11,000,000, and that of Australia with its islands scarcely 3,000,000. Africa is more than three times the size of Europe, and Asia is more than four times as large. The extent of the continents is twenty-three times greater than that of all the islands taken together.^[15]

Of the polar lands little is known. Greenland probably is part of a continent, the domain of perpetual snow; and the recent discovery of so extensive a mass of high volcanic land near the south pole is an important event in the history of physical science, though the stern severity of the climate must for ever render it unfit for the abode of animated beings, or even for the support of vegetable life. It seems to form a counterpoise to the preponderance of dry land in the northern hemisphere. There is something sublime in the contemplation of these lofty and unapproachable regions—the awful realm of ever-during ice and perpetual fire, whose year consists of one day and one night. The strange and terrible symmetry in the nature of the lands within the polar circles, whose limits are to us a blank, where the antagonist principles of cold and heat meet in their utmost intensity, fills the mind with that awe which arises from the idea of the unknown and the indefinite.

The tendency of the land to assume a peninsular form is very remarkable, and it is still more so that almost all the peninsulas tend to the south—circumstances that depend on some unknown cause which seems to have acted very extensively. The continents of South America, Africa, and Greenland, are peninsulas on a gigantic scale, all tending to the south; the Asiatic peninsula of India, the Indo-Chinese peninsula, those of Corea, Kamtchatka, of Florida, California, and Aliaska, in North America, as well as the European peninsulas of Norway and Sweden, Spain and Portugal, Italy and Greece, take the same direction. All the latter have a rounded form except Italy, whereas most of the others terminate sharply, especially the continents of South America and Africa, India, and Greenland, which have the pointed form of wedges; while some are long and narrow, as California, Aliaska, and Malacca. Many of the peninsulas have an island or group of islands at their extremity, as South America, which terminates with the group of Tierra del Fuego: India has Ceylon; Malacca has Sumatra and Banca; the southern extremity of New Holland ends in Van Dieman’s Land; a chain of islands run from the end of the peninsula of Aliaska; Greenland has a group of islands at its extremity; and Sicily lies close to the termination of Italy. It has been observed as another peculiarity in the structure of peninsulas that they generally terminate boldly, in bluffs, promontories, or mountains, which are often the last portions of the continental chains. South America terminates in Cape Horn, a high promontory, which is the visible termination of the Andes; Africa with the Cape of Good Hope; India with Cape Comorin, the last of the Ghauts; New Holland ends with South-East Cape in Van Dieman’s Land; and Greenland’s farthest point is the elevated bluff of Cape Farewell.^[16]

There is a strong analogy between South America and Africa in form and the unbroken mass which their surface presents, while North America resembles Europe, in being much indented by inland seas, gulfs, and bays. Eastern Asia is evidently continued in a subaqueous continent from the Indian Ocean across the Pacific nearly to the west coast of America, of which New Holland, the Indian Archipelago, the islands of the Asiatic coast and of Oceania, are the great table-lands and summits of its mountain-chains. With the exception of a vast peninsula in Siberia, between the mouths of the rivers Yenesei and Khatanga and the unknown regions of Greenland, the two great continents terminate in a very broken line to the north; and as they sink beneath the Icy Ocean, the tops of their high lands and mountains rise above the waves and stud the coast with innumerable snow-clad rocks and islands. The 70th parallel is the average latitude of these northern shores, which have a great similarity on each side of Behring’s Straits in form, direction, and in the adjacent islands.

The peninsular form of the continents adds greatly to the extent of their coasts, of such importance to civilization and commerce. All the shores of Europe are deeply indented and penetrated by the Atlantic Ocean, which has formed a number of inland seas of great magnitude, so that it has a greater line of maritime coast, compared with its size, than any other quarter of the world. The extent of coast from the Straits of Waigatz, in the Polar Ocean, to the Strait of Caffa, at the entrance of the Sea of Azoff, is about 17,000 miles. The coast of Asia has been much worn by currents, and possibly also by the action of the ocean occasioned by the rotation of the earth from west to east. On the south and east especially it is indented by large seas, bays, and gulfs; and the eastern shores are rugged and encompassed by chains of islands which render navigation dangerous. Its maritime coast is about 33,000 miles in length.

The coast of Africa, 16,000 miles long, is very entire, except perhaps at the Gulf of Guinea and in the Mediterranean. The shores of North America have probably been much altered by the equatorial current and the Gulf-stream. There is little doubt that these currents, combined with volcanic action, have hollowed out the Gulf of Mexico, and separated the Antilles and Bahama Islands from the continent. The coast is less broken on the west, but in the Icy Ocean there is a labyrinth of gulfs, bays, and creeks. The shores of South America on both sides are very entire, except towards Southern Chile and Cape Horn, where the tremendous surge and currents of the ocean in those high latitudes have eaten into the mountains, and produced endless sounds and fiords which run far into the land. The whole continent of America has a sea-coast of 31,000 miles. Thus, it appears that the ratio of the number of linear miles in the coast-line to the number of square miles in the extent of surface, in each of these great portions of the globe, is 164 for Europe, 376 for Asia, 530 for Africa, and 359 for America. Hence, the proportion is most favourable to Europe, with regard to civilization and commerce; America comes next, then Asia, and last of all Africa, which has every natural obstacle to contend with, from the extent and nature of its coasts, the desert character of the country, and the insalubrity of its climate, on the Atlantic coast at least.

The continents had been raised from the deep by a powerful effort of the internal forces acting under widely-extended regions, and the stratified crust of the earth either remained level, rose in undulations, or sank into cavities, according to its intensity. Some thinner portion of the earth’s surface, giving way to the internal forces, had been rent into deep fissures, and the mountain masses had been raised by violent concussions, perceptible in the convulsed state of their strata. The centres of maximum energy are marked by the pyrogenous rocks, which generally form the nucleus or axis of the mountain masses, on whose flanks the stratified rocks are tilted at all angles to the horizon, whence, declining on every side, they sink to various depths, or stretch to various distances in the plains. Enormous as the mountain-chains and table-lands are, and prodigious as the forces that elevated them, they bear a very small proportion to the mass of the level continents and to the vast power which raised them even to their inferior altitude. Both the high and the low lands had been elevated at successive periods; some of the very highest mountain-chains are but of recent geological date, and some chains that are now far inland once stood up as islands above the ocean, while marine strata filled their cavities and formed round their bases. The influence of mountain-chains on the extent and form of the continents is beyond a doubt.

Notwithstanding the various circumstances of their elevation, there is everywhere a certain regularity of form in mountain masses, however unsymmetrical they may appear at first, and rocks of the same kind have identical characters in every quarter of the globe. Plants and animals vary with climate, but a granite mountain has the same peculiarities in the southern as in the northern hemisphere—at the equator as near the poles. Single mountains, insulated on plains, are rare, except where they are volcanic; they generally appear in groups intersected by valleys in every direction, and more frequently in extensive chains symmetrically arranged in a series of parallel ridges, separated by narrow longitudinal valleys, the highest and most rugged of which occupy the centre: when the chain is broad and of the first order in point of magnitude, peak after peak arises in endless succession. The lateral ridges and valleys are constantly of less elevation, and are less bold, in proportion to their distance from the central mass, till at last the most remote ridges sink down into gentle undulations. Extensive and lofty branches diverge from the principal chains at various angles, and stretch far into the plains. They are often as high as the chains from which they spring, and it happens not unfrequently that these branches are united by transverse ridges, so that the country is often widely-covered by a net-work of mountains, and, at the point where these offsets diverge, there is frequently a knot of mountains spreading over hundreds of square miles.

One side of a mountain range is usually more precipitous than the other, but there is nothing in which the imagination misleads the judgment more than in estimating the steepness of a declivity. In the whole range of the Alps there is not a single rock which has 1600 feet of perpendicular height, or a vertical slope of 90°. The declivity of Mont Blanc towards the AllÉe Blanche, precipitous as it seems, does not amount to 45°; and the mean inclination of the peak of Teneriffe, according to Baron Humboldt, is only 12° 30'. The Silla of Caraccas, which rises precipitously from the Caribbean Sea, at an angle of 53° 28', to the height of between 6000 and 7000 feet, is a majestic instance of perhaps the nearest approach to perpendicularity of any great height yet known.

The circumstances of elevation are not the only causes of that variety observed in the summits of mountains. A difference in the composition and internal structure of a rock has a great influence upon its general form, and on the degree and manner in which it is worn by the weather. Thus dolomite assumes generally the form of peaks like saw-teeth; crystalline schists assume the form of needles, as in the Alps; slates and quartziferous schists take the form of triangular pyramids; calcareous rocks a rounded shape; serpentine and trachyte are often twisted and crumpled; phonolites assume a pyramidal form; dark walls like those in Greenland are of trap and basalt; and volcanoes are indicated by blunt cones and craters. Thus, the mountain-peaks often indicate by their form their geological nature.

Viewing things on a broad scale, it appears that there is also a very striking connection between the physical geography or external aspect of different countries and their geological structure. By a minute comparison of the different parts of the land, M. BouÉ has shown that a critical similarity of outward forms, while indicating similarity in the producing causes, must also, to a large extent, indicate identity of structure, and therefore from the external appearance of an unexplored country its geological structure may be inferred, at least to a certain extent. This he illustrates by pointing out a correspondence, even in their most minute details, between the leading features of Asia and Europe, and the identity of their geological structure. It has been justly observed, that when the windings of our continents and seas are narrowly examined, and the more essential peculiarities of their contours contemplated, it is evident that Nature has not wrought after an indefinite number of types or models, but that, on the contrary, her fundamental types are very few, and derived from the action of definite constructive forces on a primary base.^[17] The whole of our land and sea, in fact, may be decomposed into a less or greater number of masses, either exhibiting all these fundamental forms or merely a portion of them.^[18] The peninsular structure of the continents with their accompanying islands is a striking illustration of the truth of this remark, and many more might be adduced. It follows, as a consequence of that law in Nature’s operations, that analogy of form and contour throws the greatest light on the constitution of countries far removed from each other. Even the picturesque descriptions of a traveller often afford information of which he may be little aware.

The determination of the contemporaneous upheaval of parallel mountain-chains, by a comparison of the ages of the inclined and horizontal strata resting on them, is one of the highest steps of generalization which has been attempted by geologists. It was first observed by the miners of the Freyberg school, and established as a law by Werner, that veins of the same nature in mines occur in parallel fissures opened at the same time, and probably filled with metal, also simultaneously, at a subsequent period; and that fissures differing in direction differ also in age. As these veins and fissures are rents through the solid strata, often of unfathomable depth and immense length, there is the strongest analogy between them and those enormous fissures in the solid mass of the globe through which the mountain-chains have been heaved up. Were the analogy perfect, it ought to follow that parallel mountain-chains have been raised simultaneously, that is, by forces acting during the same geological periods. By a careful examination of the relative ages of the strata resting on the flanks of many of the mountain systems, M. Elie de Beaumont has shown, if not proved, that all strata elevated simultaneously assume a parallel direction, or, that parallel strata are contemporaneous. Should this be confirmed, parallel chains in the most distant regions will no longer be regarded as insulated masses. They will indicate the course of enormous fissures that have simultaneously rent the solid globe and passed through the bed of the ocean from continent to continent, from island to island. M. Von Buch has found that four systems of mountains in Germany accord with this theory, and Mr. Sedgwick has observed the same in the Westmoreland system of mountains, believed to be the most ancient of which the globe can now furnish any traces. This theory of elevation of mountain-chains, which originated with M. Elie de Beaumont, has already led to the discovery of twelve different periods of fracture and elevation in the European continent alone.

Mr. Hopkins, of Cambridge, has taken a purely mathematical view of the subject, and has proved that, when an internal expansive force acts upwards upon a single point in the earth’s crust, the splits or cracks must all diverge from that point like radii in a circle, which is exactly the case in many volcanic districts; that when the expansive force acts uniformly from below on a wide surface or area, it tends to stretch the surface, so that it would split or crack where the tension is greatest, that is, either in the direction of the length or breadth; and if the area yields in more places than one, he found that the fissures would necessarily be parallel to one another, which agrees with the law of arrangement of veins in mines. These results are greatly modified by the shape of the area, but the modification is according to a fixed law, which, instead of interfering with that of the parallelism of the fissures, actually arises from the same action which produces it. This investigation agrees in all its details with the fractures in the districts in England to which they were applied, so that theory comes to the aid of observation in this still unsettled question.^[19]

It seems to bear on the subject, that parallel mountain-chains are similar in geological age, even when separated by seas. For instance, the mountains of Sweden and Finland are of the same structure, though the Gulf of Bothnia is between them; those of Cornwall, Brittany, and the north-west of Spain are similar; the Atlas and the Spanish mountains, the chains in California and those on the adjacent coast of America, and, lastly, those of New Guinea and the north-east of Australia, furnish examples. The same correspondence in geological epoch prevails in chains that are not parallel, but that are convergent from the form of the earth. This observation is also extensively exemplified in those that run east and west, as the Alps, the Balkan, Taurus, Paropamisus with its prolongation, the Hindoo Coosh, the Himalaya, and in America the mountains of Parima and the great chain of Venezuela.

Continents and mountain-chains are often interrupted by posterior geological changes, such as clefts and cavities formed by erosion, as evidently appears from the correspondence of the strata. The chalk cliffs on the opposite sides of the British Channel show that Britain once formed part of the continent; the formation of the Orkney Islands and Ireland is the same with that of the Highlands of Scotland; the formation is the same on each side of the Straits of Gibraltar; that of Turkey in Europe passes into Asia Minor, the Crimea into the Caucasus, a volcanic region bounds the Straits of Babelmandel, and Behring’s Straits divide the ancient strata of a similar age. This is particularly the case with coast islands.^[20]

Immediately connected with the mountains are the high table-lands which form so conspicuous a feature in the Asiatic and American continents. These perpetual storehouses of the waters send their streams to refresh the plains, and to afford a highway between the nations. Table-lands of less elevation, sinking in terraces of lower and lower level, constitute the links between the high ground and the low, the mountains and the plains, and thus maintain the continuity of the land. They frequently are of the richest soil, and enjoy the most genial climate, affording a delightful and picturesque abode to man, though the plains are his principal dwelling. Sloping imperceptibly from the base of the inferior table-lands, or from the last undulations of the mountains, to the ocean, they carry off the superfluous waters. Fruitfulness and sterility vary their aspect: immense tracts of the richest soil are favoured by climate, and hardly require culture; a greater portion is only rendered productive by hard labour, compelling man to fulfil his destiny; while vast regions are doomed to perpetual barrenness, never gladdened by a shower.

The form of the great continent has been determined by an immense zone of mountains and table-lands, lying between the 30th and 40th or 45th parallels of north latitude, which stretches across it from W.S.W. to E.N.E., from the coasts of Barbary and Portugal, on the Atlantic Ocean, to the farthest extremity of Asia, at Behring’s Straits, in the North Pacific. North of this lies a vast plain, extending almost from the Pyrenees to the utmost parts of Asia, the greater portion of which is a dead level, or low undulations, uninterrupted except by the Scandinavian and British system on the north, and the Ural chain, which is of small elevation. The low lands south of the mountainous zone are much indented by the ocean, and of the most diversified aspect. By much the greater part of the flat country lying between the China Sea and the river Indus is of the most exuberant fertility, while that between the Persian Gulf and the foot of the Atlas is, with some happy exceptions, one of the most desolate tracts on the earth. The southern lowlands, too, are broken by a few mountain systems of considerable extent and height.

The Atlas and Spanish mountains form the western extremity of that great zone of high lands that girds the old continent almost throughout its extent: these two mountain systems were certainly at one time united, and from their geological formation, and also the parallelism of their mountain-chains, they must have been elevated by forces acting in the same direction; now, indeed, the Strait of Gibraltar, a sea-filled chasm 960 fathoms deep, divides them.^[21]

A very elevated and continuous mountain region extends in a broad belt along the north-west of Africa, from the promontory of Gher, on the Atlantic, to the Gulf of Sidra, in the Mediterranean, enclosing all the high lands of Morocco, Algiers, and Tunis. It is bounded by the Atlantic and Mediterranean, and insulated from the rest of Africa by the desert of Sahara.

This mountain system consists of three parts. The chain of the Greater Atlas, which is farthest inland, extends from Cape Gher, on the Atlantic, to the Lesser Syrtis; and, in Morocco, forms a knot of mountains 15,000 feet high, covered with perpetual snow.

The Lesser Atlas begins at Cape Spartel (the ancient Cape Cotes) opposite to Gibraltar, and keeps parallel to the Mediterranean till it attains the Gharian range in Tripoli, the last and lowest of the Little Atlas, which runs due east in a uniformly diminishing line till it vanishes in the plain of the Great Syrtis. That long, rugged, but lower chain of parallel ridges and groups which forms the bold coasts of the Straits of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean, is only a portion of the Lesser Atlas, which rises above it majestically, covered with snow. The flanks of the mountains are generally clothed with forests, but their summit is one uninterrupted line of bare inaccessible rocks, and they are rent by fissures frequently not more than a few feet wide—a peculiar feature of the whole system.

The Middle Atlas, lying between the two great chains, consists of a table-land, rich in valleys and rivers, which rises in successive terraces to the foot of the Greater Atlas, separated by ridges of hills parallel to it. This wide and extensive region has a delightful climate, abounds in magnificent forests, and the valleys are full of vitality. The crest of the Atlas is of granite and crystalline strata; their flanks and lower ranges are sandstone and limestone, on which the tertiary strata rest.

The Spanish peninsula consists chiefly of a table-land traversed by parallel ranges of mountains, and is surrounded by the sea, except where it is separated from France by the Pyrenees, which extend from the Mediterranean to the Bay of Biscay, but are continued by the Cantabrian chain to Cape Finisterre on the Atlantic.

The Pyrenean chain is of moderate height at its extremities, but its summit maintains a waving line, whose mean altitude is 7990 feet; it rises to a greater height on the east; its highest point is the Malahite or Nethou, 11,170 feet above the sea. The snow lies deep on these mountains during the greater part of the year, and is perpetual on the highest parts; but the glaciers, which are chiefly on the northern side, are neither so numerous nor so large as in the Alps.

The greatest breadth of this range is about 60 miles, and its length 270. It is so steep on the French side, so rugged and so notched, that from the plains below its summits look like the teeth of a saw, whence the term Sierra has been appropriated to mountains of this form. On the Spanish side, gigantic sloping offsets, separated by deep precipitous valleys, extend to the banks of the Ebro. All the Spanish mountains are torn by deep crevices, the beds of torrents and rivers.

The interior of Spain is a table-land with an area of 93,000 square miles, nearly equal to half of the peninsula. It dips to the Atlantic from its western side, where its altitude is about 2300 feet. There it is bounded by the Iberian mountains, which begin at the point where the Pyrenees take the name of the Cantabrian chain, and run in a tortuous south-easterly direction through all Spain, constituting the eastern boundary of Valencia and Murcia, and sending many branches through those provinces to the Mediterranean: its most elevated point is the Sierra Urbion.

Four nearly parallel ranges of mountains originate in this limiting chain, running from E.N.E. to W.S.W. diagonally across the peninsula to the Atlantic. Of these, the high Castilian chain of the Guadarama and the Sierra de Toledo cross the table-land, the Sierra Morena, so called from the dingy colour of its forests of Hermes oak, on the southern edge; and lastly, the Sierra Nevada, though only 100 miles long and 50 broad, the finest range of mountains in Europe after the Alps, traverses the plains of Andalusia and Grenada. The table-land is monotonous and bare of trees; the plains of Old Castile are as naked as the Steppes of Siberia, and uncultivated, except along the banks of the rivers. Corn and wine are produced in abundance on the wide plains of New Castile and Estremadura: other places serve for pasture. The table-land becomes more fertile as it extends towards Portugal, which is altogether more productive than Spain, though the maritime provinces of the latter on the Mediterranean are luxuriant and beautiful, with a semi-tropical vegetation.

Granite, crystalline strata, and primary fossiliferous rocks prevail chiefly in the Spanish mountains, and give them their peculiar, bold, serrated aspect. The valleys between the parallel ranges, through which the great Spanish rivers flow to the Atlantic, appear to have been at one time the basins of lakes.

The mass of high land is continued through the south of France, at a much lower elevation, by chains of hills and table-lands, the most remarkable of which are the Montagnes Noires, and the great plateau of Auvergne, once the theatre of violent volcanic action. It continued from the beginning to the middle of the tertiary period, so that there are cones and craters of various ages and perfect form: some of the highest, as the Puy de DÔme, are trachytic domes of elevation; Mont d’Or, 6200 feet high, is a portion of an immense crater of elevation.^[22] The volcanic mountains of Auvergne, and the CÉvennes, which are a little lower, are the most remarkable of the French system; the offsets of the latter reach the right bank of the Rhone. In fact, the French mountains are the link between the more elevated masses of Western and Eastern Europe.

The eastern and highest part of the European portion of the mountain-zone begins to rise above the low-lands about the 52d parallel of north latitude, ascending by terraces, groups, and chains of mountains, through six or seven degrees of latitude, till it reaches its highest point in the great range of the Alps and Balkan. The descent on the south side of this lofty mass is much more rapid and abrupt, and the immediate offsets from the Alps shorter; but, taking a very general view, the Apennines and mountains of Northern Sicily, those of Greece and the southern part of Turkey in Europe, with all the islands of the adjacent coasts, are but outlying members of the general protuberance.

The principal chain of the Hyrcanian mountains, the Sudetes, and the Carpathian mountains, form the northern boundary of these high lands: the first, consisting of three parallel ridges, extends from the right bank of the Rhine to the centre of Germany, about 51° or 52° of N. lat., with a mean breadth of about 100 miles, and terminates in the knot of the Fichtelberge, covering an area of 9000 square miles, on the confines of Bavaria and Bohemia. The Sudetes begin on the east of this group, and, after a circuit of 300 miles round Bohemia, terminate at the small elevated plain of the Upper Oder, which connects them with the Carpathian mountains. No part of these limiting ranges attains the height of 5000 feet, except the Carpathians, some of which are very high. They consist of mountain-groups united by elevated plains, rather than of a single chain: the Tatra mountains, bisected by the 20th meridian, is their loftiest point. This range is high also in Transylvania, before it reaches the Danube, which divides it from a secondary branch of the Balkan. Spurs decline in undulations from these limiting chains on the great northern plain, and the country to the south, intervening between them and the Alps, is covered with an intricate network of mountains and plains of moderate elevation.

The higher Alps, which form the western crest of the elevated zone, may be said to begin at the Cape della Melle on the Gulf of Genoa, and bend round by the west and north to Mont Blanc; then turning E.N.E. they run through the Grisons and Tyrol to the Great Glockner, in 40° 7' N. lat., and 12° 43' E. long., where the higher Alps terminate a course 420 miles long. All this chain is lofty; much of it is above the line of perpetual congelation; the most elevated part lies between the Col de la Seigne, on the western shoulder of Mont Blanc, and the Simplon. The highest mountains in Europe are comprised within this space, not more than 60 miles long, where Mont Blanc, the highest of all, has an absolute elevation of 15,759·8 feet. The central ridge of the higher Alps is jagged with peaks, pyramids, and needles of bare and almost perpendicular rock, rising from fields of perpetual snow and rivers of ice to an elevation of 14,000 feet. Many parallel chains and groups, alike rugged and snowy, press on the principal crest, and send their flanks far into the lower grounds. Innumerable secondary branches, hardly lower than the main crest, diverge from it in various directions; of these, the chain of the Bernese Alps is the highest and most extensive. It breaks off at the St. Gothard, in a line parallel to the principal chain, separates the Valais from the Canton of Berne, and with its ramifications forms one of the most remarkable groups of mountain scenery in Europe. Its endless maze of sharp ridges and bare peaks, mixed with gigantic masses of pure snow, fading coldly serene into the blue horizon, present a scene of sublime quiet and repose, unbroken but by the avalanche or the thunder.

At the Great Glockner the range of the Alps, hitherto undivided, splits into two branches, the Noric and Carnic Alps: the latter is the continuation of the chief stem. Never rising to the height of perpetual snow, it separates the Tyrol and Upper Carinthia from the Venetian States, and, taking the name of the Julian Alps at Mont Terglou, runs east till it joins the Eastern Alps, or Balkan, under the 18th meridian. Offsets from this chain cover all the neighbouring countries.

It is difficult to estimate the width of the Alpine chain: that of the higher Alps is about 100 miles; it increases to 150 east of the Grisons, and amounts to 200 between the 15th and 16th meridians, but is not more than 80 at its junction with the Balkan.

The Stelvio, 9174 feet above the sea, is the highest carriage-pass in these mountains. That of St. Gothard goes directly over the crest of the Alps. Passes very rarely go over the summit of a mountain; they generally cross the watershed, ascending by the valley of a torrent, and descending by a similar path on the other side.

The frequent occurrence of extensive deep lakes is a peculiar feature in European mountains, rarely to be met with in the Asiatic system, except in the AltaÏ and on the elevated plains.

With the exception of the Jura, whose pastoral summit is about 3000 feet above the sea, there are no elevated table-lands in the Alps: the tabular form, so eminently characteristic of the Asiatic high lands, begins in the Balkan. The Oriental peninsula rises by degrees from the Danube to Bosnia and Upper Macedonia, which are some hundred feet above the sea; and the Balkan extends 600 miles along this elevated mass, from the Julian Alps to Cape Eminec on the Black Sea. It begins by a table-land 70 miles long, traversed by low hills, ending, towards Albania and Myritida, in precipitous limestone rocks from 6000 to 7000 feet high. Rugged mountains, all but impassable, succeed to this, in which the domes and needles of the Schandach, or ancient Scamus, are covered with perpetual snow. Another table-land follows, whose marshy surface is bounded by mural precipices at Mount Arbelus, near the town of Sophia. There the Hemus, or Balkan properly so called, begins, and runs in parallel ridges, separated by longitudinal valleys, to the Black Sea, dividing the plains between the Lower Danube and the Propontis into nearly equal parts. The central ridge is passable in few places, and where there is no lateral ridge the precipices descend at once to the plains.

The Balkan is everywhere rent by terrific fissures across the chains and table-lands, so deep and narrow that daylight is almost excluded. These chasms afford the safest passes across the range; the others along the faces of the precipices are frightful.

The Mediterranean is the southern boundary of the elevated zone of Eastern Europe, whose last offsets rise in rocky islands along the coasts. The crystalline mountains of Sardinia and Corsica are outlying members of the Maritime Alps, while shorter offsets end in the plains of Lombardy, forming the magnificent scenery of the Italian lakes. Even the Apennines, whose elevation has given its form to the peninsula of Italy, are but secondary on a greater scale to the broad central band, as well as the mountains and high land in the north of Sicily, which form the continuance of the Calabrian chain.

The Apennines, beginning at the Maritime Alps, enclose the Gulf of Genoa, and run through the centre of Italy in parallel ranges to the middle of Calabria, where they split into two branches, one of which goes to Capo de Leuca, on the Gulf of Torento, the other to Cape Spartivento, in the Straits of Messina. The whole length is about 800 miles. None of the Apennines come within the line of perpetual snow, though it lies nine months in the year on the Gran Sasso d’ltalia, 9521 feet high, in Abruzza Ulteriore.

Offsets from the Julian and Eastern Alps render Dalmatia and Albania perhaps the most rugged tract in Europe; and the Pindus, which forms the watershed of Greece, diverges from the latter chain, and, running south 200 miles, separates Albania from Macedonia and Thessaly.

Greece is a country of mountains, and, although none are perpetually covered with snow, it lies nine months on several of their summits. The chains terminate in strongly projecting headlands, which reach far into the sea, and reappear in the numerous islands and rocks which stud that deeply-indented coast. The Grecian mountains, like the Balkan, are torn by transverse fractures. The defile of Blatamana and the Gulf of Salonica are examples. The Adriatic, the Dardanelles, and the Sea of Marmora limit the secondaries of the southern part of the Balkan.

The valleys of the Alps are long and narrow; those among the mountains of Turkey in Europe and Greece are mostly caldron-shaped hollows, often enclosed by mural rocks. Many of these cavities of great size lie along the foot of the Balkan. In the Morea they are so encompassed by mountains that the water has no escape but through the porous soil. They consist of tertiary strata, which had formed the bottom of lakes. Caldron-shaped valleys occur also in most volcanic countries, as Sicily, Italy, and central France.

The table-lands which constitute the tops of mountains or of mountain-chains are of a different character from those terraces by which the high lands slope to the low. The former are on a small scale in Europe, and of a forbidding aspect, with the exception of the Jura, which is pastoral, whereas the latter are almost always habitable and cultivated. The mass of high land in south-eastern Europe shelves on the north to the great plain of Bavaria, 3000 feet high; Bohemia, which slopes from 1500 to 900 feet; and Hungary, from 4000 above the sea to 300. The descent on the south of the Alps is six or seven times more rapid, because the distance from the axis of the chain is shorter.

It is scarcely possible to estimate the quantity of ice on the Alps; it is said, however, that, independent of the glaciers in the Grisons, there are 1500 square miles of ice in the Alpine range, from 80 to 600 feet thick. There are no glaciers east of the Great Glockner, except on the small group of Hallstadt. Thirty-four bound the snowy regions of Mont Blanc, and 95 square miles of snow and ice clothe that mountain. Some glaciers have been permanent and stationary in the Alps time immemorial, while others now occupy ground formerly bearing corn or covered with trees, which the irresistible force of the ice has swept away. These ice-rivers, formed on the snow-clad summits of the mountains, fill the hollows and high valleys, hang on the declivities, or descend by their weight through the transverse valleys to the plains, where they are cut short by the increased temperature, and deposit those accumulations of rocks and rubbish, called moraines, which had fallen upon them from the heights above; but their motion is so slow, that six generations may pass before a stone fallen on the upper end of a long glacier can reach the moraine. In the Alps, the glaciers move at the rate of from 12 to 25 feet annually, and, as in rivers, the motion is most rapid in the centre, and slower at the sides and bottom on account of friction. It is slower in winter, yet it does not cease, because the winter’s cold penetrates the ice, as it does the ground, only to a limited depth. Glaciers are not of solid ice; they consist of a mixture of ice, snow, and water; so that they are in some degree flexible and viscous, but acquire more solidity as they descend to lower levels; evaporation goes on at their surface, but they are not consumed by it. The front is perpetually melting, but maintains a permanent form; it is steep and inaccessible, owing to the figure of the ground over which it tumbles in its icy cascade, sometimes 1000 feet high. The middle course is rather level, the higher part very steep, and the surface is uneven and rent by crevices into which the purest blue streams fall in rushing cascades while the sun is up, but they freeze at his setting, and then a death-like silence prevails. The rocks and stones that fall on them from the surrounding heights protect the ice below from the sun which melts it all around, so that at last they rest on elevated pinnacles till they fall off by their weight, and in this manner those numerous pyramids are formed with which the surface is bristled. Throughout much of the length of a glacier the winter’s snow melts from its surface as completely as it does from the ground; it is fed from above, for in the upper part the snow never melts, but accumulates in a stratified form and is consolidated. In some of the largest glaciers, where there is a difference of 4000 feet in height between the origin and termination, the pressure is enormous and irresistible, carrying all before it; even the thickest forest is overwhelmed and crushed.

Glaciers advance or retreat according to the severity or mildness of the season; they have been advancing in Switzerland of late years, but they are subject to cycles of unknown duration. From the moraines, as well as the striÆ engraven on the rocks over which they have passed, M. Agassiz has ascertained that the valley of Chamouni was at one time occupied by a glacier that had moved towards the Col de Balme. A moraine 2000 feet above the Rhone at St. Maurice would appear to indicate that, at a remote period, glaciers had covered Switzerland to the height of 2155 feet above the Lake of Geneva.

Their increase is now limited by various circumstances—as the mean temperature of the earth, which is always above the freezing-point in those latitudes; excessive evaporation; and blasts of hot air, which occur at all heights, in the night as well as in the day, from some unknown cause. They are not peculiar to the Alps, but have been observed also in the glaciers of the Andes. From the heat of the valley thawing the ice, the natural springs that rise under the glacier as they do elsewhere, the heat of the earth, the melting of the glacier itself, the rain that falls on its surface, which rushes down its crevices, a stream of turbid water is formed which works out an icy cavern at the termination of the glacier and flows through it into the lower ground. Thus, a glacier “begins in the clouds, is formed by the mountains, and ends in the ocean.”^[23]

Granite no doubt forms the base of the mountain system of Eastern Europe, though it more rarely comes into view than might have been expected. Crystalline schists of various kinds are enormously developed, and generally form the most elevated pinnacles of the Alpine crest and its offsets, and also the principal chains in Greece and Turkey in Europe; but the secondary fossiliferous strata constitute the chief mass, and often rise to the highest summits; indeed, secondary limestones occupy a great portion of the high land of Eastern Europe. Calcareous rocks form two great mountain-zones on each side of the central chain of the Alps, and rise occasionally to altitudes of 10,000 or 12,000 feet. They constitute a great portion of the central range of the Apennines, and fill the greater part of Sicily. They are extensively developed in Turkey in Europe, where the plateau of Bosnia with its high lands on the south, part of Macedonia, and Albania with its islands, are principally composed of them.^[24] Tertiary strata of great thickness rest on the flanks of the Alps, and rise in some places to a height of 5000 feet; zones of the older Pleiocene period flank the Apennines on each side, filled with organic remains; and half of Sicily is covered with the Pleiocene strata. It appears that the Atlas, the Sierra Morena and most of the Spanish mountains, the central chain of the Caucasus, and the Balkan, were raised before the period of the erratic blocks.

From numerous dislocations in the strata, the Alps appear to have been heaved up by many violent and repeated convulsions, separated by intervals of repose, and different parts of the chain have been raised at different times; for example, the Maritime Alps and the south-western part of the Jura mountains were raised previously to the formation of the chalk: but the tertiary period appears to have been that of the greatest commotions; for nearly two-thirds of the lands of Europe have risen since the beginning of that epoch, and those that existed then acquired additional height, though some sank below their original level. During that time the Alps acquired an additional elevation of between 2000 and 3000 feet; Mont Blanc then attained its present altitude; the Apennines rose 1000 or 2000 feet higher; and the Carpathians seem to have gained an accession of height since the seas were inhabited by the existing species of animals.^[25]