28 STEPPES AND DESERTS. 



Steppes in the temperate zone are characterized by the great height 

 attained by flowering herbaceous plants, Saussureas and other Synan- 

 therse, and Papilionaceae, especially a host of species of Astragalus. 

 In traversing pathless portions of these Steppes, the traveller, seated 

 in the low Tartar carriages, sees the thickly crowded plants bend 

 beneath the wheels, but without rising up cannot look around him 

 to see the direction in which he is moving. Some of the Asiatic 

 Steppes are grassy plains; others are covered with succulent, ever- 

 green, articulated soda plants : many glisten from a distance with 

 flakes of exuded salt, which cover the clayey soil, not unlike in ap- 

 pearance to fresh fallen snow. 



These Mongolian and Tartarian Steppes, interrupted frequently 

 by mountainous features, divide the very ancient civilization of 

 Thibet and Hindostan from the rude nations of Northern Asia. 

 They have in various ways exercised an important influence on the 

 changeful destinies of man. They have compressed the population 

 towards the south, and have tended, more than the Himalaya, or 

 than the snowy mountains of Srinagur and Ghorka, to impede the 

 intercourse of nations, and to place permanent limits to the extension 

 of milder manners, and of artistic and intellectual cultivation in 

 Northern Asia. 



But, in the history of the past, it is not alone as an opposing bar- 

 rier that we must regard the plains of Central Asia : more than once 

 they have proved the source from whence devastation has spread 

 over distant lands. The pastoral nations of these Steppes Moguls, 

 G-etse, Alani, and Usuni have shaken the world. As, in the course 

 of past ages, early intellectual culture has come like the cheering 

 light of the sun from the East, so, at a later period, from the same 

 direction barbaric rudeness has threatened to overspread and involve 

 Europe in darkness. A brown pastoral race, (") of Tukiuish or 

 Turkish descent, the Hiongnu, dwelling in tents of skins, inhabited 

 the elevated Steppe of Gobi. Long terrible to the Chinese power, a 

 part of this tribe was driven back into Central Asia. The shock or 

 impulse thus given passeiUxom natio4^fia4ien, until it reached the 

 ancient land of the Finns, near the Ural mountains. From thence, 

 Huns, Avari, Ghazares, and various admixtures of Asiatic races, 

 broke forth. Armies of Huns appeared successively on the Volga, 



