Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/431

Rh a barren waste; that in Europe, on the contrary, the mountains of Norway and Lapland are admirable bulwarks which cover the northern countries from the wind; so that at Stockholm, which is about fifty nine degrees latitude, the earth produces plants, fruits, and corn; and that about Abo, which is sixty one degrees, and even to sixty three and sixty four, there are mines of silver, and the land is fruitful enough."

We see also in these relations, "that Great Tartary, which is to the south of Siberia, is also exceeding cold; that the country cannot be cultivated; that nothing can be found but pasturage for their flocks and herds; that trees cannot grow there, but only brambles, as in Iceland; that there are near China and India, some countries where there grows a kind of millet, but that neither corn nor rice will ripen; that there is scarcely a place in Chinese Tartary at forty three, forty four, and forty five degrees, where it does not freeze seven or eight months in the year, so that it is as cold as Iceland, though it might be imagined from its situation to be as hot as the south of France; that there are no cities except four or five towards the eastern ocean, and some which the Chinese, for political reasons, have built near China; that in the rest of great Tartary, there are only a few situated in Buchar, Turquestan, and Cathay; that the reason of this extreme cold proceeds from the nature of the nitrous earth, full of saltpetre, and sand, and more particularly from the height of the land. Father Verbiest found, that a certain place eighty leagues north of the Rh