THE VEGETABLE WORLD. 355 



storms to give him food enough for Superstition. The Steppe 

 receives a more terrible life when a countryman " cleans 

 his farm," that is, when he has set on fire the Burian 

 upon it, with the remains of old straw and hay, now 

 useless on account of the new harvest, and full of mice 

 and other vermin, and when the dry grass of the Steppe 

 has caught ; among the common grass it creeps like 

 a serpent, with measured swiftness ; here it seizes a 

 Burian bush, and with a tremendous noise the blaze 

 soars high toward heaven, crackling and hissing, there 

 reaching a tract of flourishing Feather-grass, rises in a 

 light white flame, darts with terrible activity over the 

 waving field, devouring millions of delicate feathers in a 

 few moments. Sometimes, hemmed in between two 

 roads bare of vegetation, or between streams of water, 

 the flame draws itself together and almost disappears, 

 then, suddenly reaching a new dry surface of grass, gains 

 new and fearful power, spreads into a wide sea of smoke 

 and fire, in which the columns of flame whirling up 

 higher and brighter than the rest, mark the unlucky 

 situations of human dwellings. Steppe-fires of this kind 

 often move about over a region for eight or ten days, 

 crossing and diverging in directions which cannot be 

 calculated on, following every alteration of the breeze, 

 bidding defiance to the best considered attempts at 

 escape. 



But the Steppe is barren, robbed of vegetation; what 

 the flames had spared is but the victim of the icy breath 

 of the piercing Winter. Ever denser and more gloomy, 

 the clouds draw together, ever thicker falls the snow, 

 and ever more cutting drives the cold north wind over 

 the unprotected surface. The belated traveller urges his 

 horse with the most pressing haste. Silver streaks rise up 



23* 



