Except in the river valleys it is a poor territory, rough and mountainous towards the south, but subsiding into undulating wastes and pasture-lands towards the Turkman desert, and the Oxus riverain which is highly cultivated.
The list of reptiles includes the venomous Vipera ammodytes and Pelias berus, while scorpions and lizards infest the stony wastes of the Karst.
Fortified by these resolves he betook himself to a hermit life in the wastes of Chalcis, S.E.
Physical symptoms also appear; the face assumes an earthy colour, the body wastes, constipation is usually present to an extreme degree, the secretions become arrested, loss of appetite and indigestion follow and the mouth is parched.
Long (1819) tended to confirm old ideas of sandy wastes west of the Mississippi.
