THE ASIATIC STEPPES AND THEIR FAUNA. 93 



another; the winter-sleepers have closed the doors of their retreats; 

 reptiles and insects have withdrawn into their winter hiding- 

 places. 



A single night's frost covers all the water-basins with thin ice; 

 a few more days of cold and the fetters of winter are laid heavily 

 on the lakes and pools; and only the rivers and streams, longer able 

 to withstand the frost, afford a briefly prolonged shelter to the 

 migratory birds which have still delayed their farewell. Gentle 

 north-west winds sweep dark clouds across the land, and the snow 

 drizzles down in small flakes. The mountains have already thrown 

 on their snowy mantles; and now the low ground of the steppes 

 puts on its garment of white. The wolf, apprehensive of storms, 

 leaves the reed-thickets and the spirsea shrubberies which have 

 hitherto served him well as hiding-places, and slinks hungrily 

 around the villages and the winter quarters of the nomad herds- 

 man, who now seeks out the most sheltered and least exhausted of 

 the low grounds, in order to save his herds, as far as may be, from 

 the scarcity, hardship, and misery of the winter. Against the 

 greedy wolf the herdsman acts on the aggressive, as do the Cossack 

 settlers and peasants; he rides out in pursuit, follows the thief's 

 tell-tale track to his lair, drives him out, and gives chase. With 

 exultant shouts he spurs on his horse and terrifies the fugitive, all 

 the while brandishing in his right hand a strong sapling with 

 knobbed roots. The snow whirls around wolf, horse, and rider; 

 the keen frost bites the huntsman's face, but he cares not. After a 

 chase of an hour, or at most of two hours, the wolf, which may have 

 run a dozen or twenty miles, can go no further, and turns upon its 

 pursuer. Its tongue hangs far out from its throat, the ice-tipped 

 hairs of its reeking hide stand up stiffly, in its mad eyes is expressed 

 the dread of death. Only for a moment does the noble horse hesi- 

 tate, then, urged on by shout and knout, makes a rush at the fell 

 enemy. High in the air the hunter swings his fatal club, down 

 it whizzes, and the wolf lies gasping and quivering in its death 

 agony. Wild horses and antelopes, impelled by hunger, like the 

 wolf, shift their quarters at this season, in the endeavour to eke out 

 a bare subsistence; even the wild sheep of the mountains wend from 



