THE STEPPES OF INNER AERICA. 169 



shores, the two oceans, as it were, stretching their hands across the 

 continent. Here, moreover, at certain times, thunder-storms bring 

 downpours of rain so heavy that the desert has to give way to the 

 more living steppe, and the year is divided into two essentially 

 different seasons — of life and of death, of rain and of drought, 

 whereas in the barren desert only the periodic winds bear tidings of 

 the seasonal changes in progress elsewhere. 



In order to understand the steppe-lands it is necessary to give a 

 rapid sketch of their seasons. For every country reflects its domi- 

 nant climate, and the general aspect of a region is in great part an 

 expression of the conflicting forces of its seasons, apart from which 

 it cannot be understood. 



Almost as soon as the rains are over, the season of destruction 

 and death begins — ^the long and terrible winter of the African 

 interior — a winter which brings about by heat the same dire effects 

 as are wrought in the North by cold. Before the sky, hitherto 

 often clouded, has become quite clear, some of the trees, which had 

 become green in spring, throw off" their foliage, and with the wind- 

 swept leaves go the wandering birds. These had brooded here in 

 the spring, but now they seek other fields. The stems of the 

 cereals turn yellow before the rains have ceased; the low grasses 

 wither and dry. The intermittent water-courses cease to have any 

 flow; the rain-filled pools are dried up; and not only the reptiles 

 and amphibians, but even the fishes peculiar to them, are forced to 

 burrow and seek winter-quarters in the damp clay. The seeds of 

 plants, and the eggs or larvae of insects are also hidden away in the 

 earth. 



As the sun travels to the north, the winter sets in rapidly. 

 Autumn lasts but for a few days. It causes no withering nor 

 gradual death of leaves, no glow of red and gold such as we see 

 at home, but exercises, through its hot winds, such a destructive 

 power that the leaves are dried up like mown grass under the sun's 

 rays, and either fall to the ground green, or crumble away on the 

 stalk, so that the trees, with few exceptions, assume their winter 

 aspect with extreme suddenness. Over the plains, on which, a few 

 days before, the tall grass still waved in the wind, dust clouds 



