As rough and severe as are the northern and southern snow and ice zones, so bright, mild and pure is the central zone, which is the only inhabitable zone. In this zone there are 77 large islands, of which a medium-sized island is larger than the Americas. And each of these islands is, in its formation as well as in its products, more varied by far than Lapland is from the most southern tropical countries on earth. – Saturn, Chapter 2, Paragraph 4