48 THE ASIATIC PLAINS. f 



produce corn in great quantities, although too thin to permit the 

 development of plants which have need of a certain depth. " The 

 most agreeable portion of these plains," says Humboldt, " is adorned 

 with small shrubs of the family Rosacece, tulips, and the cypriped/ium. 

 Just as the Torrid Zone is distinguished by the tendency of all its 

 plants to become trees, so some of the Asiatic Steppes in the Tem- 

 perate Zones have the peculiar characteristic that all their flowering 

 herbaceous plants attain to a remarkable height, such as the Saussurea 

 and other synantheraceae, the leguminous shrubs, and, above all, an 

 infinite variety of astragals. If the traveller attempts to go forward, 

 in the small Tartar chariots, across these pathless, trackless prairies, 

 he must keep standing, to ascertain his direction, and he will see the 

 plants, interlaced as in a dense forest, bend before his wheels. Some 

 of these Steppes are grassy plains ; others are covered with saline 

 plants, fleshy, articulated, and always green. Often, too, one sees afar 

 the glitter of saline efflorescence, like lichens, spreading unevenly 

 over the glassy soil, like newly-fallen snow."* 



Comparing the Asiatic Steppes with the Pampas of South 

 America, Humboldt does not hesitate to declare that the former are 

 far the richer. " In that part of the Steppes, inhabited by the 

 Kirghiz and the Kalmucks, which I have traversed," he says, "that 

 is to say, from the Don, the Caspian Sea, and the Oural (Ja'ik), to the 

 Obi and the Upper Irtysh, near Lake Dsaisang, over a space of forty 

 degrees of longitude, one can never discover, even at the most distant 

 limit, a phenomenon frequent in the Llanos, the Pampas, and the 

 Prairies of America ; that horizon vague and boundless as the sea, 

 which seems to support the vault of heaven. Seldom in Asia was 

 the spectacle offered me of even a single side of the horizon. The 

 Steppes are traversed by numerous chains of hills, or covered with 

 forests of conifers. The vegetation of Asia, even in the richest 

 pasturage, is nowhere confined to the families of the Cyperacece. A 

 great variety prevails there of herbaceous or frutescent plants. In 

 the spring season, small rosacese and amygdalacese, with rosy or 

 * Humboldt, " Ansichteu der Natur," vol. i., App. 



