6 
RUSSIA IN EUROPE 
a height of 6 inches. A little farther north the rainfall exceeds 
the evaporation and river-flow and forms a woodless plain of 
small lakes and morasses, called tundra, on which neither man 
nor beast could set foot if the ground were not frozen to the 
depth of very many feet; in summer melting a little more than 
one foot. Into this treeless region in summer come innumer- 
able birds of different kinds to build their nests and hatch their 
young. In autumn they fly south — some to the Crimea, some 
to Asia, others into Africa. So level is the countr}'^ that in their 
flight they rarely reach a lieight of 500 feet above sea-level. 
This is the land of the Samoyeds, where agriculture is impossi- 
ble, and the natives live by Ashing and hunting. Still farther 
north, yet in Russia, is Nova Zembla, 75° north latitude, where 
no animal life exists ; but even here, in this land of ice and 
snow, several hundred species of lichen have l)een found. 
Though the surface of the water is frozen for about nine months 
in the year, }’^et fish and animalculse abound, the temperature of 
the fish varying with the water in which they live, here only a 
little above the freezing-point. 
Returning to the black zone, near the latitude of Mo.scow, and 
traveling south, first the hardwood gives place to the rich prairie 
land; then we reach the agricultural steppe, a treeless land, 
susceptible of cultivation, though lacking in the ricli, deep loam 
of the black zone. Farther south lie the vast barren steppes, 
in the west a sandy desert, in the east a vast saline plain, for- 
merly the bed of a great lake, of which the Caspian and Aral 
seas formed a small part. This is the genuine steppe, a country 
level as the sea, without even a gentle undulation or a particle 
of cultivation — neither tree nor bush, nor even a stone, to diversify 
the monotonous expanse. The inhabitants lead a nomadic life, 
like those of the Arctic region. 
The very diversity of the country and the occupations of the 
people of Russia tend to unity, for the north needs the grain of 
the south, and the south requires the wood of the north. Middle 
Russia, that great center of manufactures, without the north and 
south would lack markets for its manufactures. 
MOUNTAINS. 
The greatest extent of upland in Russia is near Great Nov- 
gorod, southwest of St. Petersburg, where the Valdai hills rise 
from 800 to 1,000 feet. 
