ISOLATED LOWLANDS OF
EUROPE
Of these, two of large extent occur in the basin of the river Danube, separated by the gorge of the “Iron Gate,” formed where the Balkan and Carpathian ranges approach most closely. The upper plain, circled about on all sides by mountains, is that of Hungary, over which corn fields interchange with pastoral steppes well stocked with horses and cattle, sheep and swine, merging in some parts into marsh lands or into dusty sand flats. Where the plain begins to rise to the sunny hills, the Hungarian grape ripens to yield its famous wines. The lower plain of the Danube, which might be called a branch of the vast Russian lowland, is that of Roumania, with its far-stretching treeless heaths and pasture lands supporting great herds of cattle and horses, passing into wide reed swamps which characterize the delta of the Danube.
Corresponding to the Roumanian plain is that of Lombardy, perhaps the most productive region of Europe, in which the irrigated meadows may be six times mowed in the year, and where wheat, maize, and rice, and wine and dairy produce, are yielded in vast quantity.
MOUNTAINS AND
HIGHLANDS
Europe presents two great mountain regions; a southern, extending along the northern border of the Mediterranean from Turkey to Spain, in continuation of the chief line of the heights of Asia; and a northern, appearing in Scandinavia and Britain, separated from the former by the western branch of the great lowland that we have been noticing.
THE ALPINE
REGION
The Alps rise as the central mass of the southern mountain region of Europe. The many groups comprised in this series of heights which curve round the plain of Lombardy arrange themselves into three generally recognized divisions:—The Western Alps, the groups lying between the Gulf of Genoa and the Little St. Bernard Pass; the Central Alps, extending from the St. Bernard to the pass named the Stilfser Joch; and the Eastern Alps beyond this. The central mass is the highest, rising with majestic forms from deep valleys up to sharp riven peaks, high above the line of permanent snow; its wings to east and west decrease in elevation towards the Gallic Sea and the plain of the Danube on either side. All the less jagged heights are mantled in snows, from which glacier streams descend. The largest of these ice streams are the Aletsch glacier from the group of the Finsteraarhorn, and those of the frequented valley of Chamounix, descending from Mont Blanc, the monarch of the Alps.
FAMOUS ALPINE
PASSES
The passes of the Alps have always had importance as the gates of traffic from North Italy to the rest of Europe; some of them, such as the two St. Bernard Passes, are under the protection of friendly monks; but railroads have now been constructed to pass the great barrier by the tunnels of Mont Cenis in the west, of St. Gothard in the center, and the Simplon farther east (opened 1906), by a line over the Brenner Pass from Innsbruck to Bozen, and by an eastern road over the Semmering from Vienna to Graz.
Southward the Alps fall steeply to the low plain of Lombardy, but a mass of lesser highlands and plateaus extends northward from them over central Europe to the border of the plain of Northern Germany.