From North Pole to Equator: Studies of Wild Life and Scenes in Many Lands

by Alfred Edmund Brehm

There is perhaps monotony, but there is also the interest of a well-marked individuality in that immense tract of country which includes the whole of Central Asia, and extends into Southern Europe, and which forms the region of the steppes. To the superficial observer it may seem an easy thing to characterize these steppes, but the difficulty of the task is soon felt by the careful observer. For the steppes are not so invariably uniform, so absolutely changeless as is usually supposed. They have their time of blooming and their time of withering, their summer and their winter aspects, and some variety at every season is implied in the fact that there are mountains and valleys, streams and rivers, lakes and marshes. The monotony is really due to the thousand-fold repetition of the same picture, what pleased and even charmed when first seen becoming tame by everyday familiarity.

The Russian applies the word steppe, which we have borrowed from his language, to all unwooded tracts in middle latitudes, when they are of considerable extent, and bear useful vegetation. It matters not whether they be perfectly flat or gently undulating plains, highlands or mountains, whether there be patches of fat, black soil, admitting of profitable agriculture, or merely great tracts of poor soil covered with such vegetation as grows without man’s aid, and is useful only to the nomadic herdsman. This wide usage of the term is convenient, for throughout the whole region we find the same plants rising from the ground, the same types of animal life, and approximately the same phenomena of seasonal change.

Unwooded the steppe-lands must be called, but they are not absolutely treeless. Neither shrubs nor trees are awanting where the beds of the streams and rivers form broad and deep valleys. In very favourable circumstances, willows, white and silver poplars, grow to be lofty trees, which may unite in a thick fringe by the river banks, or birches may establish themselves and form groves and woods, or pines may plant their feet firmly on the sand-dunes, and form small settlements, which, though not comparable to true forests, are, at least, compact little woods, like the growths along the river-banks. But, after all, such wooded spots are exceptions, they constitute to some extent a foreign element in the steppe scenery, and suggest oases in a desert.

At one place the steppe may stretch before the eye as a boundless plain, here and there gently undulating; at another place the region has been much upheaved, is full of variety, and may even be mountainous. Generally the horizon is bounded on all sides by ranges of hills of variable height, and often these hills inclose a trough-like valley from which it seems as if the water must be puzzled to find its way out, if, indeed, it does so at all. From the longer cross valleys of the often much-ramified ranges a small stream may flow towards the lowest part of the basin and end in a lake, whose salt-covered shores sparkle in the distance as if the winter snow still lay upon them. Viewed from afar, the hills look like lofty mountains, for on these vast plains the eye loses its standard for estimating magnitude; and when the rocks stand out above the surface and form domes and cones, sharp peaks and jagged pinnacles on their summits, even the practised observer is readily deceived. Of course there are some genuinely lofty mountains, for, apart from those near the Chinese boundary, there are others on the Kirghiz steppes, which even on close view lose little of the impressiveness that the ruggedness of their peaks and slopes gives them when seen from a distance. The higher and more ramified the mountains, the more numerous are the streams which they send down to the lower grounds, and the larger are the lakes that occupy the depressions at their base—basins which their feeders are unable to fill, even though unable to find a way through the surrounding banks. The more extensive, also, are the salt-steppes around these lakes—salt because they have no outlet. But apart from these variations, the characteristics of the steppes are uniform; though the composition of the picture is often changed, its theme remains the same.

Fig. 10.—View in the Asiatic Steppes.

We should convey a false impression if we denied charm, or even grandeur, to the scenery of the steppes. The North German moorland is drearier, Brandenburg is more monotonous. In the gently undulating plain the eye rests gratefully on the lakes which fill all the deeper hollows; in the highlands or among the loftier mountains the gleaming water-basins are a real ornament to the landscape. It is true that the lake is, in most cases, though not invariably, without the charm of surrounding verdure, often without so much as a fringe of bushes. But, even when it lies naked and bare, it brightens the steppes. For the blue sky, mirrored on its surface, smiles kindly towards us, and the enlivening effect of water makes itself felt even here. And when a lake is ringed round by hills, or framed, as at Alakul, by lofty mountains; when the steppes are sharply and picturesquely contrasted with the glittering water-surface, the dark mountain-sides, and the snowy summits; when the soft haze of distance lies like a delicate veil over hill and plain, suggesting a hidden beauty richer than there really is; then we acknowledge readily and gladly that there is a witchery of landscape even in the steppes.

Fig. 11.—A Salt Marsh in the Steppes.

Even when we traverse the monotonous valleys many miles in breadth, or the almost unbroken plains, whose far horizon is but an undulating line, when we see one almost identical picture to north, south, east, and west, when the apparent infinitude raises a feeling of loneliness and abandonment, even then we must allow that the steppes have more to show than our heaths, for the vegetation is much richer, more brilliant, and more changeful. Indeed, it is only here and there, where the salt-steppes broaden out around a lake, that the landscape seems dreary and desolate. In such places none of the steppe plants flourish, and their place is taken by a small, scrubby saltwort, not unlike stunted heather, only here and there attaining the size of low bushes. The salt lies as a more or less thick layer on the ground, filling the hollows between the bushes so that they look like pools covered with ice. Salt covers the whole land, keeping the mud beneath permanently moist, adhering firmly to the ground, and hardly separable from it. Great balls of salt and mud are raised by the traveller’s feet and the horses’ hoofs at every step, just as if the ground were covered with slushy snow. The waggon makes a deep track in the tough substratum, and the trundling wheels sometimes leave marks on the salt like those left on snow in time of hard frost. Such regions are in truth indescribably dismal and depressing, but elsewhere it is not so.