THE ASIATIC STEPPES AND THEIR FAUNA. 95 



breathe freely, though the winter still continues to press heavily 

 on the steppes. 



The sun rises higher in the heavens; its rays fall more warmly 

 on the southern slopes of the mountains and hills, and dark patches 

 of clear ground appear everywhere, growing larger day by day, 

 except when an occasional fresh fall of snow hides them for ^ little. 

 The first breath of spring comes at last, but only slowly can it free 

 the land from winter's shackles. Only when the life-giving sun- 

 shine is accompanied by the soft south wind, at the earliest in the 

 beginning of April, usually about the middle of the month, does the 

 snow disappear quickly from the lower slopes of the mountains and 

 from the deep valleys rich in black earth. Only in gorges and 

 steep-walled hollows, behind precipitous hills, and amid thick bushes, 

 do the snow-wreaths linger for almost another month. In all other 

 places the newly-awakened life bursts forth in strength. The 

 thirsty soil sucks in the moisture which the melting snow supplies, 

 and the two magicians — sun and water — now unite their irresistible 

 powers. Even before the last snow-wreaths have vanished, before 

 the rotten ice-blocks have melted on the lakes, the bulbous plants, 

 and others which live through the winter, put forth their leaves and 

 raise their flower-stalks to the sun. Among the sere yellow grass 

 and the dry gray stems of all herbs which were not snapped by the 

 autumnal storm, the first green shimmers. It is at this time that the 

 settlers and the nomads set fire to the thick herbage of various sorts, 

 and what the storms have spared the flames devour. But soon after 

 the fire has cleared the ground, the plant-life reappears, in patches 

 at least, in all its vigour. From the apparently sterile earth 

 herbaceous and bulbous growths shoot up ; buds are unpacked, 

 flowers unfold, and the steppe arrays itself in indescribable splen- 

 dour. Boundless tracts are resplendent with tulips, yellow, dark 

 red, white, white and red. It is true that they rise singly or in 

 twos and threes, but they are spread over the whole steppe-land, 

 and flower at the same time, so that one sees them everywhere. 

 Immediately after the tulips come the lilies, and new, even more 

 charming colours appear wherever these lovely children of the 

 steppes find the fit conditions for growth, on the hillsides and in 



