STEPPES, the distinctive name applied to those extensive plains which, with the occasional interpolation of low ranges of hills, stretch from the Dnieper across the s.e. of European Russia, round the shores of the Caspian and Aral seas, between the Altai and Ural chains, and occupy the low lands of Siberia. The word, which is of Russian origin, denotes primarily an uncultivated plain of great extent, and has been applied by geographers to the above-mentioned regions as expressive of their flat, sentibarren, treeless character. In spring and early summer the steppes are clad with a thin cover ing of green herbage, l eccarte parched and barren under the scorching beat and droaght of June, and in winter are bid beneath a thick covering of snow, which, raised in huge white thin clouds, and driven hither and thither by furious storms, brings destruction to every living creature within its sweep. The monotony of the steppe is as fatiguing to the traveler as is that of the sandy, arid desert. For hundreds of leagues his eye is
compelled to endure the same unvarying level of scanty herbage, unbroken by tree or bush: and bounded by the utmost limits of the horizon; only in spring, while the veg etation is succulent and fitted for pasture, is the solitude broken here and there by herds of horses and cattle and their mounted guardians. In autumn, when the tall herbage, withered by the heats of summer, has been rooted up and broken by violent winds, it becomes gathered and rolled together into enormous balls, sometimes of from 9 to 11 yards in diameter. Here and there are tracts which offer some inducement to the agri culturist; such are the steppe c. of the Dnieper, that between the Don and Volga—of inferior fertility, but rich in coal—and the steppes of south-western Siberia. especially those in the government of Tomsk, all of which have been partially colonized; but a very wide extent is hopelessly barren.