THE HORSE AND HIS RIDER. 91 



plants, and the herds recover. The winter is intensely 

 cold. The piercing winds which have swept across 

 the North American continent and the Arctic regions 

 of Siberia, howl over these now desolate and cheerless 

 regions, where nothing breaks the monotony of thou- 

 sands and thousands of miles of level ground, except 

 the tumuli of the ancient Mongol warriors, the tents 

 of the Calmuck and the Tartar, and the huts of the 

 Cossack or the herdsman, and where nothing inter- 

 venes to arrest the violence or to modify the rigor of 

 the freezing blast. No language can give an adequate 

 idea of these metels as they are called in Southern 

 Russia. They come down on the land with such 

 whirling and driving gusts, such furious and con- 

 tinuous tempests, such whistlings and roarings of the 

 wind, and a sky so murky and threatening, that no 

 hurricane at sea can be more terrific. The snow is 

 now piled up mountains high, now hollowed into 

 deep valleys, now spread out into rushing and heaving 

 billows ; or it is driven through the air, fluttering like 

 a long white veil, until the wind has scattered the last 

 shreds before it. Whole flocks of sheep, surprised by 

 the tempest close to their folds, and even herds of 

 horses, have been driven into the Black Sea or the 

 Caspian, and drowned. When beset by such dangers 

 their instinct usually prompts them to cluster together 

 in a circle and form a compact mass, so as to present 

 a less surface to the metel. But the force of the wind 



