128 M. Kupffer's Account of the Russian Steppes, 



dition to the formation of springs ; and it is this inequality, 

 indeed, which can alone produce the necessary pressure for 

 causing the water to rise above the surface of the earth. It is 

 more difficult to explain the difference between the climate of 

 the steppes and that of unequal ground, but it is a fact which is 

 well established. The changes of temperature are greater in 

 the steppes, the winter being colder and the summer warmer. 

 Russian travellers who have lately visited the steppes which 

 separate the Sea of Aral from the Caspian have been almost 

 always exposed to a cold of from — 20° to — 25° of Reaumur, 

 ( — 13° to — 25° of Fahrenheit,) accompanied with a very 

 hio-h wind. The north and north-east winds, which blow vio- 

 lently during winter, meeting with no obstacle, carry into the 

 steppes the climate of the colder regions from which they 

 come; whilst in summer the south and south-west accumulate 

 as it were there the heat with which they are charged, and 

 which is neither absorbed by evaporation nor extinguished by 

 any shadow. During the day the atmosphere is insufferably 

 hot ; during the night the variation is so strong that a very 

 sharp cold is sometimes experienced. These considerable and 

 sudden variations of temperature destroy the tender vegetation 

 of annual plants, and leave only the perennial ones, whose lig- 

 neous and hardy stalks offer a greater resistance to their in- 

 fluence. The plants which are numerous are the Robinia fru- 

 tescens, the Hedysarum grandiflorum, the Astragalus Austria- 

 cm and sulcatus, the Oxytropis caudata, and pilosa, and other 

 papilionaceous plants ; several species of Artemisia, and the 

 Prunus cerasus nana, the cherry tree of the steppes, which 

 scarcely reaches a foot in height, and whose sour fruit is col- 

 lected by the inhabitants. Wherever the steppe is traversed 

 by rivers, or where a slight inequality in the ground permits 

 the water to amass in a greater quantity, the hardy plants soon 

 disappear beneath the plough, and the steppe is changed into 

 a productive soil ; trees multiply on the heights, and houses 

 and villages appear. 



It is thus that the banks of the Don, and of the Donetz, 

 (Little Don) and other rivers which flow through the country 

 of the Cossacks, are peopled. A great number of villages, 

 some of which are very considerable, stretch along the banks 



