STEPPES AND DESERTS. 5 



of the Llanos and Pampas of Caraccas and Buenos Ayres. 

 The finest part of these plains, which is inhabited by Asiatic 

 pastoral tribes, is adorned with low bushes of luxuriant 

 white-blossomed Rosacese, and with Fritillarias, Tulips, and 

 Cypripedias. 



As the torrid zone is characterised on the whole by a dis- 

 position in all vegetation to become arborescent, so some of 

 the Asiatic Steppes in the temperate zone are charac- 

 terised by the great height attained by flowering herbaceous 

 plants, Saussureas and other Synantherae, and Papilionacese 

 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, evergreen, articulated soda plants : 

 many glisten from a distance with flakes of exuded salt which 

 cover the clayey soil, not unlike in appearance to fresh fallen 

 snow. 



These Mongolian and Tartarian Steppes, interrupted fre- 

 quently by mountainous features, divide the very ancient 

 civilisation 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 



