92 FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



The steppes are still green when summer steals upon them, but 

 already their full splendour has sped. Only a few plants have yet 

 to attain their maturity, and they wither in the first days of the 

 burning heat; soon the gay garment of spring is exchanged for 

 one of gray and yellow. The sappy, green thyrsa-grass still with- 

 stands the drought; but its fine, flowing, thickly-haired beards 

 have already attained their full growth, and wave about in the 

 gentlest breeze, casting a silvery veil over the green beneath. A 

 few days more, and both leaves and awns are as dry as the already 

 yellowed tschi-grass, which appears in spring like sprouting corn, 

 and is now like that which awaits the sickle. The broad leaves 

 of the rhubarb lie dried on the ground, the spiraea is withered, the 

 Caragan pea-tree is leafless, honeysuckle and dwarf-almond show 

 autumnal tints; the thistle tops are hoary; only the wormwoods 

 and mugworts preserve their gray-green leaves unchanged. Bright 

 uninterrupted sunshine beats down upon the thirsty land, for it is 

 but rarely that the clouds gather into wool-packs on the sky, and 

 even if they are occasionally heavy with rain, the downpour is 

 scarce enough to lay the whirling dust which every breath of wind 

 raises. The animals still keep to their summer quarters, but the 

 songs of the birds are already hushed. Creeping things there are 

 in abundance, such as lizards and snakes, mostly vipers; and the 

 grasshoppers swarm in countless hosts, forming clouds when they 

 take wing over the steppes. 



Before the summer has ended, the steppes have put on their 

 autumnal garb, a variously shaded gray-yellow, but without variety 

 and without charm. All the brittle plants are snapped to the 

 ground by the first storm, and the next blast scatters them in a 

 whirling dance over the steppes. Grappling one another with their 

 branches and twigs, they are rolled together into balls, skipping 

 and leaping like spooks before the raging wind, half-hidden in 

 clouds of drifting dust with which the dark or snow-laden packs 

 in the sky above seem to be running a race. The summer land- 

 birds have long since flown southwards; the water-birds, of which 

 there are hosts on every lake, are preparing for flight; the migratory 

 mammals wend in crowded troops from one promise of food to 



