256 FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



whether indeed any are left, and whether these return later to their 

 native Alpine heights, or whether all, without exception, perish in 

 the course of their journey, no one can say with certainty; but so 

 much I know, that I have traversed great tracts of the tundra of 

 Lapland where the paths and other traces of a great migrating 

 army were to be seen almost everywhere, while not a single 

 lemming could be discovered. Such tracts, I have been told, remain 

 thus for several successive years, and only after long periods become 

 gradually repeopled with the busy little rodents.^" 



What hunger causes in the North is brought about by the tor- 

 tures of thirst in the richer South. As the brackish pools which 

 have aiforded water to the zebras, quaggas, antelopes, buffaloes, 

 ostriches, and other animals of the steppes, dry up more and more 

 under the burning heat of a South African winter, all the animals 

 whose necessities have hitherto been supplied by the steppes 

 assemble about the pools which still contain a little water, and 

 these become scenes of stirring, active life. But when these, too, 

 evaporate, the animals which have congregated around them are 

 compelled to migrate, and it may happen that despair takes posses- 

 sion of them, as it did of the little rodents already described, and 

 that, collecting in herds like the wild horses and Chinese antelopes 

 (dzieren) of the steppes of Central Asia, or the bisons of the North 

 American prairies, they rush straight on for hundreds of miles, to 

 escape the hardships of winter. 



In the South, too, the wild horses are the first to turn their backs 

 on the inhospitable country. Till the drought sets in, these beauti- 

 fully-marked, strong, swift, self-confident children of the Ka.rroo, the 

 zebra, quagga, and dauw, wander careless and free through their vast 

 domain, each herd going its own way under the guidance of an old, 

 experienced, and battle-tried stallion. Then the cares of the winter 

 season begin to make themselves felt. One water-pool after another 

 disappears, and the herds which gather about those which remain 

 become more and more numerous. The general distress makes even 

 the combative stallions forget to quarrel and fight. Instead of small 

 companies, herds of more than a hundred head are formed, and these 

 move and act collectively, and finally forsake the wintry region 



