224 



PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



upon their surface. On these pastures nothing interrupts the view. The eye only finds 

 a restin" 1 point at the horizon, and the traveller may pass over them for miles without 



Great Plain of the Caucasus. 



meeting with a village or a single house. From the mouths of the Danube, along the 

 coasts of the Black Sea to the Don, these green plains terminate at the horizon with an 

 azure line, such as is commonly perceived in the open sea. They possess the finest soil, 

 a black rich mould, which with slight cultivation produces in great abundance all the 

 cerealia, and even hemp and poppies. Nature, here left to herself, affords the most 

 luxuriant and succulent pastures, in which herds of splendid oxen, such as are found in 

 Holstein and Holland, graze night and day. From time to time, a few huts are met with, 

 indicated on the charts as inns or post-houses. The transition from cultivation to nomadic 

 life, is recognised in this region, which is more palpable as an easterly direction is 

 pursued, and gradually the aspect of the country changes, becomes wavy, undulating, and 

 less fertile. Everything here, says Humboldt, speaking of the district east of the Don, 

 awakes the anticipation of the steppes of Asia the climate itself, with its hot summer, 

 its cutting and sharp winter, and dry east wind, and even man himself ! 



The region of the steppes commences in Europe, and occupies almost the whole of the 

 north-west of Asia. They are extensive and almost treeless plains, intersected with barren 

 ridges and hills, with vegetation of rank coarse grass in the intervening spaces ; at least 

 this is their general character on the European side of the Volga. Mr. Stephens, the 

 American traveller, thus describes his first acquaintance with them : "At daylight we 

 awoke, and found ourselves upon the wild steppes of Russia, forming a part of the 

 immense plain which, beginning in northern Germany, extends for hundreds of miles, 

 having its surface occasionally diversified by ancient tumuli, and terminates at the long 

 chain of the Urals, which, rising like a wall, separates them from the equally vast plains 

 of Siberia. The whole of this immense plain was covered with a luxuriant pasture, but 

 bare of trees, like our own prairie lands, mostly uncultivated, yet everywhere capable of 

 producing the same wheat which now draws to the Black Sea the vessels of Turkey, Egypt, 

 and Italy, making Russia the granary of the Levant ; and which, within the last year, we 

 have seen brought six thousand miles to our own doors. Our road over these steppes 

 was in its natural state, that is to say, a mere track worn by caravans of waggons ; there 



