CLIMATIC CONTRASTS. 107 



steppes situated in a comparatively low latitude alternately 

 assume the most widely different aspects. In winter, flooded 

 by the heavy rains, they are converted into impassable 

 marshes. The genial spring clothes their nakedness with 

 a delightful garb of grasses and other herbaceous plants, 

 and for leagues upon leagues the pastures are cropped by 

 thousands of grateful flocks. In summer the cycle is com- 

 pleted, and they are once more transformed into deserts as 

 arid and sterile as those of Libya or Nubia. 



These periodical changes exhibit the most surprising 

 contrasts in the steppes that lie contiguous to the Euxino, 

 the Sea of Azov, and the Caspian Sea, where winter comes 

 attended with tremendous tempests and wild storms and 

 drifts of snow. What can arrest the headlong fury of the 

 gale, which sweeps before it the accumulated snows in fear- 

 ful avalanches, and, like the demon in the old German 

 legend, hurries onward the wild horses in a frenzy of rage? 

 Half frozen by the cold, half spent with hunger, they flee 

 in a complete panic. Oftentimes their mad precipitous 

 course carries them on to the ice-crust which gathers over 

 the shallower waters close in-shore ; it cracks, it splits, it 

 breaks up into confused fragments, and hundreds of horses 

 perish ! Towards the coming of the spring, the melting 

 snows and pitiless rains droAvn the levels with vast floods 

 of water ; which, however, quickly evaporate beneath the 

 influence of the burning sun. But in summer rain is ex- 

 ceedingly rare, and as there are neither brooks nor springs 

 to refresh the thin soil in which the herbs and shrubs take 

 root, these plants enjoy but a limited existence; they bloom 

 and fade and die, like the ephemera of a day. 



