BOOK I.
THE DESERTS OF EUROPE AND ASIA: THE LANDES, THE DUNES, AND THE STEPPES.
CHAPTER I.
THE DESERT IN FRANCE:—THE LANDES OF BRITTANY.
O those whose imaginations have been kindled by glowing pictures of the African Sahara and the Arabian wilderness, it will be, perhaps, a matter of surprise to learn that even fertile and civilized Europe includes within her boundaries regions which are scarcely less cheerless or desolate, though, happily, of far inferior extent.
Thus, it would be possible for a Frenchman whom the engagements of business, the pressure of limited means, or the ties of home, prevented from undertaking any distant voyages, to obtain a vivid conception of the great Deserts of the World without crossing the confines of his own country.
In France, so richly cultivated, so laborious, and so blessed by genial Nature, there are, nevertheless, a few districts where her sons may wholly forget—may almost disbelieve in the existence of—her cities stirring with the “hum of men,” her vineyards and her gardens, her grassy pastures, her prolific meadows, her well-ordered highways, and those “iron roads” which are the incessant channels of such restless energy, movement, and vigorous life.
Bare and desolate enough, and as yet unconquered by advancing civilization, are the mountains of France: among its gigantic ranges of the Jura, the Vosges, and the Cevennes,[2] the traveller may still ascend precipitous rocks, may hearken to the deafening roar of foamy torrents, may contemplate with astonished gaze the masses of stone upheaved in some convulsion of the ancient world, may listen to the hoarse cry of the eagle, a s
“Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world he stands.”