The deadly monotony of the scenethe trackless level, the preposterous dimensions of the plain, the sense of distance that is conveyed only by the steppe and the great desert of Gobi when the snow lies on itall these tell the same grim truth to all who look on them: the old truth that man is but a small thing and his life but as the flower of the grass.

He would have liked Etta to be favorably impressed with it, as any prejudice would naturally reflect upon Osterno, 140 miles across the steppe.

The sleigh drive across the steppe was to be accomplished in ten hours.

She was meditating over the events of the day, and more particularly over a certain skill, a quickness of touch, a deft handling of stricken men which she had noted far out on the snowy steppe a few hours earlier.

The Arabs call it the Sawâd or Black Land, and it is a striking change from the bare ledges of Arabia and Iran which enclose its flanks, and from the Northern steppe-land which it suddenly replacesat Samarra, if you are descending the Tigris, and on the Euphrates at Hit.

The steppe cannot compare with the Sawâd in fertility, but the Sawâd does not so readily yield up its wealth.

When I see the Tartar galloping over the steppe as if riding on the wind, it constantly makes me think of the wild Arabs.

The ground over which the Western armies marched was an undulating steppe.

Before their eyes there stretches not the cultivated steppe of the Lob Nor region, but the Gobi, which is barren, desolate and gloomy, according to the reports of Grjimailo, Blanc and Martin.

The Arab could make no lodgement there, but in the central steppe of the temperate plateau the Turk found a miniature reproduction of his original environment.

After the steppe cat, what; 4 drawings; The aardvark, the wombat, the steppe cat, the bandicoot.

After the steppe cat, what; 4 drawings; The aardvark, the wombat, the steppe cat, the bandicoot.

I was tramping along a Black Sea road one night, and was wondering where I should find a shelter, when suddenly a little voice cried out to me from the darkness of the steppe.

He started up with one finger to his ear and then darted out, leaving the door open and letting the steppe air pour in.

A] no steppe.

As we rested our dogs a few moments upon the summit, before commencing our descent, we tried to discern through the gathering gloom the black tents which we imagined stood somewhere beneath our feet; but nothing save the dark patches of trailing-pine broke the dead white of the level steppe.

The rising moon was just throwing into dark, bold relief the shaggy outlines of the peaks on our right, as we roused up our dogs and plunged into the throat of a dark ravine which led downward to the steppe.

Gradually, however, our speed slackened, and we came out into the moonlight on the hard, wind-packed snow of the open steppe.

Above the tumult I could hear Dodd's voice, hurling imprecations in Russian at his yelping dogs, which, in spite of his most strenuous efforts, were dragging him and his capsized sledge across the steppe.

They seemed at first sight to be illy calculated to withstand the storms which in winter sweep down across this steppe from the Arctic Ocean; but subsequent experience proved that the severest gales cannot tear them from their fastenings.

Give them a small herd of reindeer, and a moss steppe to wander over, and they ask nothing more from all the world.

[Illustration: TENTS AND REINDEER OF THE WANDERING KORAKS] Surrounding the tent in every direction were the deer belonging to the band, some pawing up the snow with their sharp hoofs in search of moss, others clashing their antlers together and barking hoarsely in fight, or chasing one another in a mad gallop over the steppe.

Bidding good-by to the Lesnoi Kamchadals, who returned from here, we muffled ourselves from the biting air in our heaviest furs, took seats on our respective sledges, and at a laconic "tok" (go) from the taiyón we were off; the little cluster of tents looking like a group of conical islands behind us as we swept out upon the limitless ocean of the snowy steppe.

One Korak looked around over the steppe with a well assumed air of seeking some landmark, and then turning to me with a confident nod, repeated the word "verst" and held up four fingers!

On the following morning at daybreak we continued our journey, and rode until four hours after dark, over a boundless level steppe, without a single guiding landmark to point the way.