STEPPES, steps, Russia, a Tatar term em ployed geographically to denote those ex tensive tracts of land which, beginning at the Dnieper, extend along the southeast of Russia, round the Caspian and Aral seas, between the Ural and Altai mountains, and occupy a con siderable portion of Siberia. These steppes present wide, treeless, monotonous tracts, which are covered with rough grass and shrubs dur ing the short spring season, but soon become arid deserts owing to the drought of summer, and in winter are wastes of snow. Though they are all open, flat and treeless, they differ considerably in aspect according to the nature of the soil of which they are composed; some tracts consisting of deep, black earth, clothed with shrubs and grasses; others of hard, sandy clay and sterile; and others again of sand or rocky shingle and only here and there dotted with vegetation. This applies, however, only to the spring and early summer; for dur ing the summer droughts all are alike desert save round the springs and streamlets, and during winter, which comes on in October, the whole is one exposed and inhospitable snow waste. The Siberian plain, as might be ex
pected from its extent, is of a more varied character, consisting of low-lying tundras, or black, swampy peat mosses, of broad undu lating steppes and partially wooded uplands; but the tundras and wooded lands are scarcely included in the steppes proper. From June till the middle of August the tundras are thawed to a small depth, the steppes are scantily covered with grass and mosses, the banks of the great rivers are green with the birch and pine and immense herds of horses and cattle give animation to the scene. In winter fearful storms rage and the dry snow is driven by the gale with a violence ivhich neither man nor animals can resist.