Then comes in natural order the Bavarian plateau, in southern Germany,
ranging from 1500 to 1600 feet high, a broad table-land, on which lie
Munich and Augsburg. It extends along the course of the Danube from west
to east, from Lower Switzerland to Ratisbon.
According to the mean measurements of Humboldt, the lower plateau of
Auvergne, in southern France, is 1040 feet in elevation; still less in
altitude (840 feet) is the plateau of Burgundy and Lothringia, between
the Vosges and the Ardennes. Limousin, Aveyron, la Forez, Monts, and Côte
d’Or are plateaus.
The plateau of Lothringia, whose mean elevation is 648 feet, lies between
the Rhine and the Moselle. The plateau of Luxemburg extends northward to
the Eifel, where Prum lies, and to the Ardennes, where Malmedy, Eupen,
Namur, Liege, and Aix-la-Chapelle lie.
In Middle Germany, a series of plateaus of the second grade begins in
Upper Hesse, and extends eastward, crossed by mountains and valleys,
traversing Upper Silesia and Galicia, and running along the northern side
of the Carpathian Mountains to Podolia, on the Dnieper, thus embracing a
strip extending through the larger part of central Europe.
A line of plateaus begins still farther to the north, at the low hills
of Jutland, crossing Holstein, Mecklenberg, the whole southern edge
of Pomerania, and extending to Lithuania and the Valdai Hills. It is
characterized by a band of inland lakes, whose basins it incloses, and
is crossed by the valleys of the Oder, Vistula, Niemen, and Duna. It has
been called the Pomerania lake country. In the hollows where the lakes
lie, (whose surfaces are, at the highest, not more than 300 feet above
the sea,) and yet more in the depressions, where rivers break through,
the level descends to as low a point as that of the great plain of
Central Europe; but at other places it rises to an elevation as high as
500 feet, and so touches upon the limits of plateaus of the second range.
Many parts of this broad upland may possibly be formed of shifting sand
dunes which have been gradually piled up along the sea line. The plateau
reaches its highest point at the eastern end, in the Valdai Hills, where
it averages 1000 feet in elevation. The highest point is 1100 feet. East
of the Volga, which rises at the eastern side of these hills, the plateau
falls off by imperceptible steps, till it is lost in the great Russian
plain.
In the peninsulas of Southern Europe, as in the Morea, (2000 feet,) and
in the Crimea, (800 to 1200 feet,) the plateau again appears in not
insignificant proportions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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