work of blood, without driving them away or disturbing them, he
notices that neither their settling nor their moving about is felt in
the least. Immediately after alighting they set to work. Leisurely
they walk up and down on the skin, carefully feeling it with their
proboscis; suddenly they stand still and with surprising ease pierce
the skin. While they suck, they lift one of the hind-legs and wave it
with evident satisfaction backwards and forwards, the more emphatically
the more the translucent body becomes filled with blood. As soon as
they have tasted blood they pay no heed to anything else, and seem
scarcely to feel though they are molested and tortured. If one draws
the proboscis out of the wound with forceps, they feel about for a
moment, and then bore again in the same or a new place; if one cuts
the proboscis quickly through with sharp scissors, they usually remain
still as if they must think for a minute, then pass the forelegs
gently over the remaining portion and make a prolonged examination to
assure themselves that the organ is no longer present; if one suddenly
cuts off one of their hind-legs, they go on sucking as if nothing had
happened and continue to move the stump; if one cuts the blood-filled
body in half, they proceed like Münchausen’s horse at the well, but at
length they withdraw the proboscis from the wound, fly staggeringly
away and die within a few minutes.
Careful observation of their habits places it beyond doubt that, in the
discovery of their victim, they are guided less by sight than by smell,
or perhaps, more correctly, by a sense which unites smell and tactile
sensitiveness.[14] It can be observed with certainty that, if a human
being approach within five yards of their resting-place, they rise and
fly to their prey without hesitating or diverging. If anyone crosses a
bare sand-bank usually free from them he can observe how they gather
about their victim. Apparently half carried by the wind, half moving by
their own exertions, but at any rate wandering aimlessly, some float
continually over even this place of pilgrimage, and a few thus reach
the neighbourhood of the observer. At once their seeming inactivity
is at an end. Abruptly they alter their course, and make straight for
the happily-found object of their longing. Others soon join them, and
before five minutes have passed, the martyr is again surrounded by
a nimbus. They find their way less easily through different strata
of air. While observing them on a high dune I had been followed and
tormented for some time by thousands, so I led the swarm to the edge of
the steep slope, let it thicken there, and then sprang suddenly to the
foot. With much satisfaction I saw that I had shaken off the greater
number of my tormentors. They swarmed in bewildered confusion on the
top of the dune, forming a dense cloud for some time over the place
from which I had leaped. A few hundreds had, however, followed me to
the lower ground.
Though the naturalist knows that it is only the female mosquitoes which
suck blood, and that their activity in this respect is indubitably
connected with reproduction, and is probably necessary to the ripening
of the fertilized eggs, yet even he is finally overcome by the tortures
caused by these demons of the tundra, though he be the most equable
philosopher under the sun. It is not the pain caused by the sting, or
still more, by the resulting swelling; it is the continual annoyance,
the everlastingly recurring discomfort under which one suffers. One can
endure the pain of the sting without complaint even at first, still
more easily when the skin has become less sensitive to the repeatedly
instilled poison; thus one can hold out for a long time. But sooner
or later every man is bound to confess himself conquered and beaten
by these terrible torturing spirits of the tundra. All resistance is
gradually paralysed by the innumerable, omnipresent armies always
ready for combat. The foot refuses its duty; the mind receives no
impressions; the tundra becomes a hell, and its pests an unutterable
torture. Not winter with its snows, not the ice with its cold, not
poverty, not inhospitality, but the mosquitoes are the curse of the
tundra.[15]
During the height of their season the mosquitoes fly almost
uninterruptedly, during sunshine and calm weather with evident
satisfaction, in a moderate wind quite comfortably, in slightly warm
weather gaily, before threatening rain most boisterously of all, in
cool weather very little, in cold, not at all. A violent storm banishes
them to the bushes and moss, but, as soon as it moderates, they are
once more lively and active, and in all places sheltered from the wind
they are ready for attack even while the storm is raging. A night of
hoar-frost plays obvious havoc among them, but does not rid us of them;
cold damp days thin their armies, but succeeding warmth brings hosts of
newly developed individuals on the field. The autumn fogs finally bring
deliverance for that year.
Autumn in the tundra comes on as quickly as spring came slowly. A
single cold night, generally in August, or at the latest in September,
puts an end to its summer life. The berries, which, in the middle of
August, looked as if they would scarcely ripen at all, have become as
juicy and sweet as possible by the end of the month; a few damp, cold
nights, which lightly cover the hills with snow, hasten their ripening
more than the sun, which is already clouded over all day long. The
leaves of the dwarf-birch become a pale but brilliant lake-red on the
upper surface, a bright yellow beneath; all the other bushes and shrubs
undergo a similar transformation: and the gloomy brown-green of the
tundra becomes such a vivid brown-red that even the yellow-green of
the reindeer-moss is no longer conspicuous. The winged summer guests
fly southwards or towards the sea, the fishes of the tundra swim down
the rivers. From the hills the reindeer, followed by the wolf, comes
down to the low grounds; the ptarmigan, now congregated in flocks of
thousands, fly up to the heights to remain until winter again drives
them down to the low tundra.
After a few days this winter, as much dreaded by us as by the migratory
birds, yet longed for by the human inhabitants of the tundra, sets
in on the inhospitable land, to maintain its supremacy longer, much
longer than spring, summer, and autumn together. For days and weeks in
succession snow falls, sometimes coming down lightly in sharp-cornered
crystals, or sometimes in large flakes, driven by a raging storm. Hills
and valleys, rivers and lakes are gradually shrouded in the same winter
dress. A brief ray of sunshine still gleams occasionally at mid-day
over the snowy expanse; but soon only a pale brightness in the south
proclaims that there the sunny day is half-gone. The long night of
winter has begun. For months only the faint reflection of the stars
twinkles in the snow, only the moon gives tidings of the vitalizing
centre of our system. But when the sun has quite disappeared from the
tundra another light rises radiant: far up in the north there flickers
and flashes “Soweidud”, the fire of God, the flaming Northern Light.
THE ASIATIC STEPPES AND THEIR FAUNA.
There is perhaps monotony, but there is also the interest of a
well-marked individuality in that immense tract of country which
includes the whole of Central Asia, and extends into Southern Europe,
and which forms the region of the steppes. To the superficial observer
it may seem an easy thing to characterize these steppes, but the
difficulty of the task is soon felt by the careful observer. For the
steppes are not so invariably uniform, so absolutely changeless as is
usually supposed. They have their time of blooming and their time of
withering, their summer and their winter aspects, and some variety
at every season is implied in the fact that there are mountains and
valleys, streams and rivers, lakes and marshes. The monotony is really
due to the thousand-fold repetition of the same picture, what pleased
and even charmed when first seen becoming tame by everyday familiarity.
The Russian applies the word steppe, which we have borrowed from his
language, to all unwooded tracts in middle latitudes, when they are
of considerable extent, and bear useful vegetation. It matters not
whether they be perfectly flat or gently undulating plains, highlands
or mountains, whether there be patches of fat, black soil, admitting
of profitable agriculture, or merely great tracts of poor soil covered
with such vegetation as grows without man’s aid, and is useful only
to the nomadic herdsman. This wide usage of the term is convenient,
for throughout the whole region we find the same plants rising from
the ground, the same types of animal life, and approximately the same
phenomena of seasonal change.
Unwooded the steppe-lands must be called, but they are not absolutely
treeless. Neither shrubs nor trees are awanting where the beds of the
streams and rivers form broad and deep valleys. In very favourable
circumstances, willows, white and silver poplars, grow to be lofty
trees, which may unite in a thick fringe by the river banks, or birches
may establish themselves and form groves and woods, or pines may plant
their feet firmly on the sand-dunes, and form small settlements, which,
though not comparable to true forests, are, at least, compact little
woods, like the growths along the river-banks. But, after all, such
wooded spots are exceptions, they constitute to some extent a foreign
element in the steppe scenery, and suggest oases in a desert.
At one place the steppe may stretch before the eye as a boundless
plain, here and there gently undulating; at another place the
region has been much upheaved, is full of variety, and may even be
mountainous. Generally the horizon is bounded on all sides by ranges of
hills of variable height, and often these hills inclose a trough-like
valley from which it seems as if the water must be puzzled to find its
way out, if, indeed, it does so at all. From the longer cross valleys
of the often much-ramified ranges a small stream may flow towards the
lowest part of the basin and end in a lake, whose salt-covered shores
sparkle in the distance as if the winter snow still lay upon them.
Viewed from afar, the hills look like lofty mountains, for on these
vast plains the eye loses its standard for estimating magnitude; and
when the rocks stand out above the surface and form domes and cones,
sharp peaks and jagged pinnacles on their summits, even the practised
observer is readily deceived. Of course there are some genuinely lofty
mountains, for, apart from those near the Chinese boundary, there are
others on the Kirghiz steppes, which even on close view lose little
of the impressiveness that the ruggedness of their peaks and slopes
gives them when seen from a distance. The higher and more ramified
the mountains, the more numerous are the streams which they send down
to the lower grounds, and the larger are the lakes that occupy the
depressions at their base--basins which their feeders are unable to
fill, even though unable to find a way through the surrounding banks.
The more extensive, also, are the salt-steppes around these lakes--salt
because they have no outlet. But apart from these variations, the
characteristics of the steppes are uniform; though the composition of
the picture is often changed, its theme remains the same.
[Illustration: Fig. 10.--View in the Asiatic Steppes.]
We should convey a false impression if we denied charm, or even
grandeur, to the scenery of the steppes. The North German moorland is
drearier, Brandenburg is more monotonous. In the gently undulating
plain the eye rests gratefully on the lakes which fill all the deeper
hollows; in the highlands or among the loftier mountains the gleaming
water-basins are a real ornament to the landscape. It is true that the
lake is, in most cases, though not invariably, without the charm of
surrounding verdure, often without so much as a fringe of bushes. But,
even when it lies naked and bare, it brightens the steppes. For the
blue sky, mirrored on its surface, smiles kindly towards us, and the
enlivening effect of water makes itself felt even here. And when a lake
is ringed round by hills, or framed, as at Alakul, by lofty mountains;
when the steppes are sharply and picturesquely contrasted with the
glittering water-surface, the dark mountain-sides, and the snowy
summits; when the soft haze of distance lies like a delicate veil over
hill and plain, suggesting a hidden beauty richer than there really
is; then we acknowledge readily and gladly that there is a witchery of
landscape even in the steppes.
[Illustration: Fig. 11.--A Salt Marsh in the Steppes.]
Even when we traverse the monotonous valleys many miles in breadth,
or the almost unbroken plains, whose far horizon is but an undulating
line, when we see one almost identical picture to north, south, east,
and west, when the apparent infinitude raises a feeling of loneliness
and abandonment, even then we must allow that the steppes have more
to show than our heaths, for the vegetation is much richer, more
brilliant, and more changeful. Indeed, it is only here and there,
where the salt-steppes broaden out around a lake, that the landscape
seems dreary and desolate. In such places none of the steppe plants
flourish, and their place is taken by a small, scrubby saltwort, not
unlike stunted heather, only here and there attaining the size of low
bushes. The salt lies as a more or less thick layer on the ground,
filling the hollows between the bushes so that they look like pools
covered with ice. Salt covers the whole land, keeping the mud beneath
permanently moist, adhering firmly to the ground, and hardly separable
from it. Great balls of salt and mud are raised by the traveller’s
feet and the horses’ hoofs at every step, just as if the ground were
covered with slushy snow. The waggon makes a deep track in the tough
substratum, and the trundling wheels sometimes leave marks on the salt
like those left on snow in time of hard frost. Such regions are in
truth indescribably dismal and depressing, but elsewhere it is not so.
The vegetation of the steppes is much richer in species than is usually
supposed, much richer indeed than I, not being a botanist, am able to
compute. On the black soil, the tschi-grass, the thyrsa-grass, and the
spiræa in some places choke off almost all other plants; but in the
spaces between these, and on leaner soil, all sorts of gay flowers
spring up. In the hollows, too, the vegetation becomes gradually that
of the marsh, and reeds and rushes, which here predominate, leave
abundant room for the development of a varied plant-life. But the time
of blooming is short, and the time of withering and dying is long in
the steppes.[16]
Perhaps it is not too much to say that the contrasts of the seasons
are nowhere more vivid than in the steppes. Wealth of bright flowers
and desert-like sterility, the charms of autumn and the desolation of
winter, succeed one another; the disruptive forces are as strong as
those which recreate, the sun’s heat destroys as surely as the cold.
But what has been smitten by the heat and swept away by raging storms
is replaced in the first sunshine of spring; and even the devouring
fire is not potent enough wholly to destroy what has been spared by the
sun and the storms. The spring may seem more potent in tropical lands,
but nowhere is it more marvellous than in the steppes, where in its
power it stands--alone--opposed to summer, autumn, and winter.
The steppes are still green when summer steals upon them, but already
their full splendour has sped. Only a few plants have yet to attain
their maturity, and they wither in the first days of the burning
heat; soon the gay garment of spring is exchanged for one of gray and
yellow. The sappy, green thyrsa-grass still withstands the drought;
but its fine, flowing, thickly-haired beards have already attained
their full growth, and wave about in the gentlest breeze, casting a
silvery veil over the green beneath. A few days more, and both leaves
and awns are as dry as the already yellowed tschi-grass, which appears
in spring like sprouting corn, and is now like that which awaits the
sickle. The broad leaves of the rhubarb lie dried on the ground, the
spiræa is withered, the Caragan pea-tree is leafless, honeysuckle and
dwarf-almond show autumnal tints; the thistle tops are hoary; only the
wormwoods and mugworts preserve their gray-green leaves unchanged.
Bright uninterrupted sunshine beats down upon the thirsty land, for it
is but rarely that the clouds gather into wool-packs on the sky, and
even if they are occasionally heavy with rain, the downpour is scarce
enough to lay the whirling dust which every breath of wind raises.
The animals still keep to their summer quarters, but the songs of the
birds are already hushed. Creeping things there are in abundance, such
as lizards and snakes, mostly vipers; and the grasshoppers swarm in
countless hosts, forming clouds when they take wing over the steppes.
Before the summer has ended, the steppes have put on their autumnal
garb, a variously shaded gray-yellow, but without variety and without
charm. All the brittle plants are snapped to the ground by the first
storm, and the next blast scatters them in a whirling dance over the
steppes. Grappling one another with their branches and twigs, they are
rolled together into balls, skipping and leaping like spooks before the
raging wind, half-hidden in clouds of drifting dust with which the dark
or snow-laden packs in the sky above seem to be running a race. The
summer land-birds have long since flown southwards; the water-birds,
of which there are hosts on every lake, are preparing for flight; the
migratory mammals wend in crowded troops from one promise of food to
another; the winter-sleepers have closed the doors of their retreats;
reptiles and insects have withdrawn into their winter hiding-places.
A single night’s frost covers all the water-basins with thin ice;
a few more days of cold and the fetters of winter are laid heavily
on the lakes and pools; and only the rivers and streams, longer
able to withstand the frost, afford a briefly prolonged shelter to
the migratory birds which have still delayed their farewell. Gentle
north-west winds sweep dark clouds across the land, and the snow
drizzles down in small flakes. The mountains have already thrown on
their snowy mantles; and now the low ground of the steppes puts on
its garment of white. The wolf, apprehensive of storms, leaves the
reed-thickets and the spiræa shrubberies which have hitherto served
him well as hiding-places, and slinks hungrily around the villages and
the winter quarters of the nomad herdsman, who now seeks out the most
sheltered and least exhausted of the low grounds, in order to save his
herds, as far as may be, from the scarcity, hardship, and misery of the
winter. Against the greedy wolf the herdsman acts on the aggressive, as
do the Cossack settlers and peasants; he rides out in pursuit, follows
the thief’s tell-tale track to his lair, drives him out, and gives
chase. With exultant shouts he spurs on his horse and terrifies the
fugitive, all the while brandishing in his right hand a strong sapling
with knobbed roots. The snow whirls around wolf, horse, and rider; the
keen frost bites the huntsman’s face, but he cares not. After a chase
of an hour, or at most of two hours, the wolf, which may have run a
dozen or twenty miles, can go no further, and turns upon its pursuer.
Its tongue hangs far out from its throat, the ice-tipped hairs of its
reeking hide stand up stiffly, in its mad eyes is expressed the dread
of death. Only for a moment does the noble horse hesitate, then, urged
on by shout and knout, makes a rush at the fell enemy. High in the air
the hunter swings his fatal club, down it whizzes, and the wolf lies
gasping and quivering in its death agony. Wild horses and antelopes,
impelled by hunger, like the wolf, shift their quarters at this season,
in the endeavour to eke out a bare subsistence; even the wild sheep of
the mountains wend from one hillside to another; only the hares and
the imperturbable sand-grouse hold their ground, the former feeding on
stems and bark, the latter on seeds and buds, but both finding only a
scant subsistence.
[Illustration: Fig. 12.--A Herd of Horses during a Snowstorm on the
Asiatic Steppes.]
For many days in succession the fall of snow continues; then the
wind, which brought the clouds, dies away, but the sky remains as
dark as ever. The wind changes and blows harder and harder from east,
south-east, south, or south-west. A thin cloud sweeps over the white
ground--it is formed of whirling snow; the wind becomes a tempest;
the cloud rises up to heaven: and, maddening, bewildering even to the
most weather-hardened, dangerous in the extreme to all things living,
the _buran_ rages across the steppes, a snow-hurricane, as terrible as
the typhoon or the simoom with its poisonous breath. For two or three
days such a snow-storm may rage with uninterrupted fury, and both man
and beast are absolutely storm-stayed. A man overtaken in the open
country is lost, unless some special providence save him; nay, more,
even in the village or steppe-town, he who ventures out of doors when
the buran is at its height may perish, as indeed not rarely happens.
When February is past, man and beast are fairly safe, and may breathe
freely, though the winter still continues to press heavily on the
steppes.
The sun rises higher in the heavens; its rays fall more warmly on the
southern slopes of the mountains and hills, and dark patches of clear
ground appear everywhere, growing larger day by day, except when an
occasional fresh fall of snow hides them for a little. The first breath
of spring comes at last, but only slowly can it free the land from
winter’s shackles. Only when the life-giving sunshine is accompanied by
the soft south wind, at the earliest in the beginning of April, usually
about the middle of the month, does the snow disappear quickly from the
lower slopes of the mountains and from the deep valleys rich in black
earth. Only in gorges and steep-walled hollows, behind precipitous
hills, and amid thick bushes, do the snow-wreaths linger for almost
another month. In all other places the newly-awakened life bursts forth
in strength. The thirsty soil sucks in the moisture which the melting
snow supplies, and the two magicians--sun and water--now unite their
irresistible powers. Even before the last snow-wreaths have vanished,
before the rotten ice-blocks have melted on the lakes, the bulbous
plants, and others which live through the winter, put forth their
leaves and raise their flower-stalks to the sun. Among the sere yellow
grass and the dry gray stems of all herbs which were not snapped by the
autumnal storm, the first green shimmers. It is at this time that the
settlers and the nomads set fire to the thick herbage of various sorts,
and what the storms have spared the flames devour. But soon after the
fire has cleared the ground, the plant-life reappears, in patches at
least, in all its vigour. From the apparently sterile earth herbaceous
and bulbous growths shoot up; buds are unpacked, flowers unfold, and
the steppe arrays itself in indescribable splendour. Boundless tracts
are resplendent with tulips, yellow, dark red, white, white and red.
It is true that they rise singly or in twos and threes, but they are
spread over the whole steppe-land, and flower at the same time, so that
one sees them everywhere. Immediately after the tulips come the lilies,
and new, even more charming colours appear wherever these lovely
children of the steppes find the fit conditions for growth, on the
hillsides and in the deep valleys, along the banks of all the streams,
and in the marshes. More gregarious and richer in species than the
tulips, they appear in much more impressive multitudes; they completely
dominate wide stretches of country, and in different places remind
one of a rye-field overgrown with corn-flowers, or of a rape-field
in full blossom. Usually each species or variety is by itself, but
here and there blue lilies and yellow are gaily intermingled, the two
complementary colours producing a most impressive effect--a vision for
rapture.