Every attempt has been made to replicate the original book as printed.Some typographical errors have been corrected. A list follows theetext. No attempt has been madeto correct or normalize printed botanical names. The footnotes have all beenmoved to the end of the etext. Some illustrations have been moved fromwithin paragraphs for ease of reading. (etext transcriber’s note)
T H E D E S E R T W O R L D.
To look on Nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still sad music of humanity.”
Wordsworth
THE DESERT WORLD.
FROM THE FRENCH OF ARTHUR MANGIN.
Edited and Enlarged
BY
THE TRANSLATOR OF “THE BIRD, BY MICHELET.”
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WITH 160 ILLUSTRATIONS BY W. FREEMAN, FOULQUIER, AND YAN DARGENT.
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LONDON:
T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW;
EDINBURGH; AND NEW YORK.
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1869.
Preface.
HE area of our present work would be very limited if we understood theword Desert in its more rigorous signification; for we should thenhave only to consider those desolate wildernesses which an inclement skyand a sterile soil seem to exclude for ever from man’s dominion.
But, by a license which usage authorizes, we are able to attribute tothis term a much more extended sense; and to call Deserts not only thesandy seas of Africa and Asia, the icy wastes of the Poles, and theinaccessible crests of the great mountain-chains; but all the regionswhere man has not planted his regular communities or permanent abodes;where earth has never been appropriated, tilled, and subjected tocultivation; where Nature has maintained her inviolability against theencroachments of human industry.
Thus understood, the picture we are about to trace assumes not only vastproportions, but an infinite variety of aspects.
Here and there, it is true, our eyes will rest on the gloomy spectacleof rugged solitudes, where the soil churlishly refuses almost every kindof product, where the boldest traveller cannot penetrate without ashudder, and where the very beast of prey is rather a visitor than aninhabitant: lugubrious regions, on whose threshold one might write thelegend written, according to Dante, on the gates of hell—