Then let us pass
farther towards the north, until we see the orient colours change
gradually into a vast belt of rainy green, where the pastures of
Switzerland, and poplar valleys of France, and dark forests of the
Danube and Carpathians stretch from the mouths of the Loire to those of
the Volga, seen through clefts in grey swirls of rain-cloud and flaky
veils of the mist of the brooks, spreading low along the pasture lands:
and then, farther north still, to see the earth heave into mighty
masses of leaden rock and heathy moor, bordering with a broad waste of
gloomy purple that belt of field and wood, and splintering into
irregular and grisly islands amidst the northern seas, beaten by storm,
and chilled by ice-drift, and tormented by furious pulses of contending
tide, until the roots of the last forests fail from among the hill
ravines, and the hunger of the north wind bites their peaks into
barrenness; and, at last, the wall of ice, durable like iron, sets,
deathlike, its white teeth against us out of the polar twilight. And,
having once traversed in thought this gradation of the zoned iris of
the earth in all its material vastness, let us go down nearer to it,
and watch the parallel change in the belt of animal life; the
multitudes of swift and brilliant creatures that glance in the air and
sea, or tread the sands of the southern zone; striped zebras and
spotted leopards, glistening serpents, and birds arrayed in purple and
scarlet.
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