With the first summer months the soil which is badly watered becomes dry and arid in the burning sun; the grass withers and turns brown, and then more dusky still, as it gets covered with the black dust which the wind disturbs, until at last the whole Steppe becomes covered with the same sombre hue; life seems for ever destroyed in all the withered vegetation, except wormwood and prickly weeds, which cover whole tracts, still thriving in the rankness of the nitrous soil, wherein they have grown to such gigantic size, that the thistles rise like little woods, capable of concealing a whole encampment, and in which a mounted rider is perfectly hidden when sitting on the tallest horse.
Towards the end of summer one parched and arid wilderness extends around on every side, in which the cattle grow thin and languid, and often perish in great numbers for want of water. The Russian herdsman can no longer extract a draft of milk from his cows; the Tartar finds that the dugs of his mares refuse him the needful refreshment. Towards autumn the Steppe is constantly set fire to; sometimes through carelessness or wilfulness, sometimes for sake of the young crop of grass that shoots up through the ashes, when the mists and dewy nights of autumn give a fresh and ephemeral life to the productions of the earth. The fires sometimes extend for hundreds of miles, and give rise to frequent accidents.
The method of escaping from the flames, which come on roaring and crackling over an extent many miles in width, is not by flight; because though the steed may carry his rider faster than the fire can travel, it is sure to overtake the fugitive in the long run. The inhabitants of the Steppe resort to the same means as those of the American prairies to save themselves; they combat fire by fire, and kindling the grass to leeward, they advance in the rear of the flames, which clears the way for them, and leaves no food for the burning sea that is rushing towards them.
In the autumn water is less scarce; a partial verdure springs through the withered stems of grass and plants, and the herds recover. The winter is intensely cold. The piercing winds which have swept across the North American continent and the Arctic regions of Siberia, howl over these now desolate and cheerless regions, where nothing breaks the monotony of thousands and thousands of miles of level ground, except the tumuli of the ancient Mongol warriors, the tents of the Kalmuck and the Tartar, and the huts of the Cossack or the herdsman, and where nothing intervenes to arrest the violence or to modify the rigour of the freezing blast. No language can give an adequate idea of these metels as they are called in Southern Russia. They come down on the land with such whirling and driving gusts, such furious and continuous tempests, such whistlings and roarings of the wind, and a sky so murky and threatening, that no hurricane at sea can be more terrific. The snow is now piled up mountains high, now hollowed into deep valleys, now spread out into rushing and heaving billows; or it is driven through the air, fluttering like a long white veil, until the wind has scattered the last shreds before it. Whole flocks of sheep, surprised by the tempest close to their folds, and even herds of horses, have been driven into the Black Sea or the Caspian, and drowned. When beset by such dangers their instinct usually prompts them to cluster together in a circle and form a compact mass, so as to present a less surface to the metel. But the force of the wind gradually compels them onwards;—they reach the shore, their footing fails, and finally they are all engulphed in the waves.
In the European Steppes the cold often reaches 30° Reaumur, or far below the point at which boiling water cast up in the air falls to the earth in a shower of frozen hailbeads. Even where some of the most southern Asiatic Steppes assume the character of the African Sahara, and where the camel in the summer sinks up to his knees in the burning sand, in winter the icicles gather as thickly on the few straggling hairs of the Tartar’s chin, as they do on the bushy beard of the Muscovite on the banks of the Neva. Perovski, the governor of Orenburg, on his expedition to Khiva, six winters since, was arrested by the impassable snow, on the very route which he dared not undertake in the summer months for fear of being buried under the hot and drifting sand, as it has not unfrequently happened to the caravans which ventured to invade the solitude of this desert.
The region of the Steppes is the home of the Cossacks, of a portion of the Mongol race, and of more than a score of Tartar tribes. It is the home of the camel and of the fat-tailed Kirghis sheep; of the wild steed and of the Taboon horse, scarcely tame; of the grey oxen, which furnish nearly all our tallow; of the antelope and the bustard. The wolf, driven to change his habits, burrows in these immense plains like a fox; the jackal infests portions of them; and the destroying locust falls like a blight and a curse on the young green grass of the free space, or on the rising harvest of the agricultural pioneer. On some parts of these wide Steppes dwell the most hideous of the human race, the Calmucks and Baskirs; and on other parts the Circassians, the most beautiful of their species, still sometimes descend in their predatory excursions.[[1]]
[1]. Revelations of Russia. Hommaire de Hell’s Steppes of the Caucasus.
