Complete Geography

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1915 edition. Excerpt: ...Germanic Type. range is much lower, and its slopes are quite gentle. In the northwest the narrow Scandinavian plateau rises abruptly along the coast of Norway to a height of about a mile, but slopes gently eastward to the Gulf of Bothnia. This highland is capped with snow fields, and in the north sends many glaciers down into the deep fiords which border the Atlantic coast. The northwestern part of Great Britain is also traversed by low mountain ranges. The whole of northern Europe between the Scandinavian and British highlands on the northwest, and the Alpine and Caucasus systems on the south, is a vast low and nearly level plain, extending from the Bay of Biscay to the Ural Mountains. This lowland covers two thirds of Europe, and is nowhere more than 600 feet above the sea, while near the coasts of the North Sea and Caspian Sea it sinks below sea level. The whole northwestern half of this plain is covered with glacial drift and dotted with glacial lakes caused by a continental glacier which, in prehistoric times, descended over the region from the Scandinavian highland and buried it under ice. In general the plain is very fertile. Drainage.--The main divide of Europe extends southwest ward from the Ural Mountains to the Strait of Gibraltar. In the east the southeastern slope is much the longer and more gradual, and is drained by the largest rivers in the grand division, --the Volga, the Don, the Dnieper, and the Danube. In western Europe Slavonic Tyfes. the northwestern slope is longer than the southeastern, and contains the larger rivers, as the Loire, the Rhine, and the Elbe, though the Ebro, the Rhone, and the Po on the southeast slope are also important rivers. Nearly all the rivers of Europe have been rendered navigable, and in general are..