Besides these great steppes, there are numerous other patches of greater or less extent and similar general character in Central Siberia, reaching from the Ural to the Lens.
Previous to the subjection of the wandering hordes to Russia, that country had lines of fortified posts for its protection against these predatory bands ; but now that the different hordes of Kirghis acknowledge the supremacy of Russia, and their several chiefs are paid by the Russian government, many of these posts have been abandoned, and open villages are now multiplying along the roads by which the Russian caravans travel towards Kiachta and in the direction of the mining districts of the Altai. The inhabitants of these villages, some of which are very large, are the only stationary population of the steppes. The wandering tribes are very numerous, and are continually shifting their ground to find food for their numerous cattle, consisting r of horses, camels, horned cattle, sheep, and goats.
The extent of the steppes properly so called, excluding the marshy plains of the north, may be about 1,000,000 square miles, Savannas or Prairies.—The central part of North America, from the Frozen Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, may be regarded as one con tinuous plain, divided by a low water-parting into the north-eastern basin, whose waters flow into the Polar Sea, Hudson's Bay, and, by the grunt lakes and St. Lawrence, into the Atlantic, and the basin of the Missouri and Mississippi whose waters fall into the Gulf of Mexico.
This immense tract of country, estimated by Humboldt at 2,430,00C square miles, is extremely varied in climate, in character and pro ductions ; for while the northern portion which is watered by the Mackenzie, Back's River, the Churchill, and the Saskatchewan, is con demned for the greater part of the year to all the horrors of an iron• bound soil and stunted polar vegetation, palms and other tropical trees grow at the extremity of the southern portion. It is this southern basin, watered by the mighty Missouri and Mississippi, with their abundant nflluents, that contains those extensive grass-eovered tracts, the savannas and prairies. They lie chiefly on the western side of the Mississippi, though along the Illinois river they are found to the extent of 1,200,000 acres, and also in other parts of the basin cast of the Mississippi. But the whole of the territory from the right bank of the Mississippi to the mountains Is not one continued savanna, or even an unbroken horizontal plain ; for it rises towards the mountains, many of whose spurs are reached by the Missouri, which has eroded their extremities into bluffs. These ridges form the boundaries of the
basins of the great tributary streams, the Platte, the Kansas, the Osage, the Arkansas, etc. Woods are also occasionally met with along the Mississippi and other waterconnees, as likewise in Arkansas; and in some places, as between the Platte and the Missouri, there are exten sive surfaces of moving sands resembling those of the African desert. Elsewhere again, as from the mouth of the Arkansas along the Missis sippi, a distance of 450 miles long and 40 miles broad, the soil is all swamps and pools, with abundance of trees : this is also the ease above Illinois lake and elsewhere. Along the upper Missouri, from the territory of the Mandan, is an interminable plain without trees or shrubs except In the marshy spots. In various parts, but more espe cially along the borders of the great plain, and in Arkansas, salt is found.
The savannas, or prairies, as they are also called, are divided by Flint, an American writer, into three kinds :-1, the heathy or bushy, which have springs and are covered with small shrubs, grape-vines, &c., very common in Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri ; 2, dry or rolling (a desig nation which will be explained in the sequel), generally destitute of water and almost of all vegetation but grass; they are the most common and extensive : the traveller may wander for days in these vast and nearly level plains without wood or water, and see no object rising above the horizon ; 3, the alluvial or wet prairies, the smallest division ; they are covered with a rich vegetation of tall rank grass. The soil is deep, black, friable, and fertile, and abounding in pools without issue, left by the floodings of the rainy season. It is over the second kind chiefly that the bisons wander in herde of from 40,000 to 50,000. Stags, or more properly wapitis, are also very numerous; and between the Arkansas and Red rivers there are droves of wild horses. Deer are also numerous ; and along the borders of the Missouri, above the Platte, or shallow river, the antelope abounds in herds of several hundreds. In summer wild goats are seen in vast numbers along the Mississippi. Above the Mandan villages are grizzly bears; and badgers, beavers, otters, foxes, wolves, racoons, opossums, squirrels, porcupines, and skunks inhabit the same region. To this enumera tion of Warden's and Flint's, Lyell adds the jaguar. The waters teem with alligators and tortoises, and their surface is covered with millions of migratory water-fowl, which perform their annual voyage between the Canadian lakes and the shores of the Mexican Gulf.