The great zone of high land which extends along the old continent from the Atlantic to the shores of the Pacific Ocean divides the low lands into two very unequal parts. That to the north, only broken by the Ural range of the Valdai table-land of still less elevation, stretches from the Thames or the British hills, and the eastern bank of the Seine to Behring’s Straits, including more than 190° of longitude, and occupying an area of at least 4,500,000 square geographical miles, which is a third more than all Europe. The greater part of it is perfectly level, with a few elevations and low hills, and in many places a dead level extends hundreds of miles. The country between the Carpathian and Ural mountains is a flat on which there is scarcely a rise in 1500 miles; and in the steppes of southern Russia and Siberia the extent of level ground is immense. The mean absolute height of the flat provinces of France is 480 feet. Moscow, the highest point of the European plain, is also 480 feet high, from whence the land slopes imperceptibly to the sea both on the north and south, till it absolutely dips below its level. Holland, on one side, would be overflowed, were it not for its dykes, and towards Astrakan the plain sinks still lower. With the exception of the plateau of Ust-Urt, of no great elevation, situated between the Caspian and Aral, and which is the extreme southern ridge of the Ural chain, the whole of that extensive country north and east of the Caspian Sea and around the Lake of Aral forms a vast cavity of 18,000 square leagues, all considerably below the level of the ocean; and the surface of the Caspian Sea itself, the lowest point, has a depression of rather more than 83 feet. The European part of the plain is highly cultivated, and very productive in the more civilized countries, in its western and middle regions, and along the Baltic. The greatest amount of cultivated land lies to the north of the watershed which stretches from the Carpathians to the centre of the Ural chain, yet there are large heaths which extend from the extremity of Jutland through Lunebourg and Westphalia to Belgium. The land is of excellent quality to the south of it. Round Polkova and Moscow there is an extent of the finest vegetable mould, equal in size to France and the Spanish peninsula together, which forms part of the High Steppe, and is mostly in a state of nature. A large portion of the great plain is pasture-land, and wide tracts are covered with natural forests, especially in Poland and Russia, where there are millions of acres of pine, fir, and deciduous trees.