The western sea-power of the Arabs was no doubt countered from Venice and Genoa, and their eastern sea-power was subdued by the Portuguese after they had rounded the Cape of Good Hope, but the downfall of the Saracens in Arabia itself was due to Turkish land-power. We must give some further consideration to the characteristics of the great Northern Heartland, and in the first place to those of the long Grassy Zone which, south of the Forest Zone, extends across its whole breadth, overlapping westward and eastward some distance into the adjoining parts of the two Coastlands.
The steppes begin in the centre of Europe, where the Hungarian Plain is completely surrounded by a ring of forested mountains, the Eastern Alps and the Carpathians.[1] To-day fields of wheat and maize have in large part replaced the native grass, but a hundred years ago, before the railways had brought markets within reach, the sea-like levels of Hungary east of the Danube were a prairie land, and the wealth of the Hungarians was almost exclusively in horses and cattle. Beyond the forested barrier of the Carpathians begin the steppes of the main belt, spreading eastward, with the shore of the Black Sea to the
- ↑ See Fig. 18, on p. 108.
