The landscape around them was bleak, almost as devoid of plant life as the white sands had been.
All the men save a small crew rowed to the beach of sugary sands.
It is marked by grey clays and sands, lignitic fossiliferous clays, beds of lignite or brown coal, sometimes 8 ft.
But its waters become absorbed in the sands of the desert steppes before they reach the Caspian.
You find thus in the very sands an anticipation of the vegetable leaf.