THE HORSE AND HIS RIDER. 95 



sand other flowers, a traveller mounted on the fleetest 

 steed, and riding without intermission night and day, 

 if such a thing were possible, would find the spring 

 elapse before he could reach the end of this vast plain, 

 so large a portion of the earth's surface does it cover ; 

 and so little would he find it differing from the fron- 

 tiers of the Ukraine to those of Chinese Tartary, that 

 at his journey's end he might still fancy the same 

 scene surrounded him as when he began it; the 

 Steppe almost everywhere resembling the Steppe on 

 its eastern, the same as on its western frontier. 



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 



