Vassenka was extremely delighted with the left horse, a horse of the Don
Steppes. He kept praising him enthusiastically.
They resemble the
steppes of Tartary more than any other known portion of Christendom; being, in fact, a vast country, incapable of sustaining a dense population, in the absence of the two great necessaries already named.
Next, having remarked that, though not a master of eloquence, he had always considered that obligations of gentility obliged him to have with me a clear and outspoken explanation, he went on to say that he sought my hand in marriage; that he looked upon it as a duty to restore to me my honour; that he could offer me riches; that, after marriage, he would take me to his country seat in the
Steppes, where we would hunt hares; that he intended never to visit St.
But my heart has gone to the Tartar war, To bleak Kansuh and the
steppes of snow, Calling my husband back to me.
This region, which resembles one of the immeasurable
steppes of Asia, has not inaptly been termed "the great American desert." It spreads forth into undulating and treeless plains, and desolate sandy wastes wearisome to the eye from their extent and monotony, and which are supposed by geologists to have formed the ancient floor of the ocean, countless ages since, when its primeval waves beat against the granite bases of the Rocky Mountains.
Thus, a few days ago, a German geometrician proposed to send a scientific expedition to the
steppes of Siberia.
The travellers were now entering one of those great
steppes of the Far West, where the prevalent aridity of the atmosphere renders the country unfit for cultivation.
The party had landed on the border of a region that is, even to this day, less known to the inhabitants of the States than the deserts of Arabia, or the
steppes of Tartary.
At present I only wish to show, that as far as quantity of food alone is concerned, the ancient rhinoceroses might have roamed over the
steppes of central Siberia (the northern parts probably being under water) even in their present condition, as well as the living rhinoceroses and elephants over the Karros of Southern Africa.
The low shrub oak plateau to which the opposite shore arose stretched away toward the prairies of the West and the
steppes of Tartary, affording ample room for all the roving families of men.
There is a keen enjoyment in a mere animal existence." They who have been traveling long on the
steppes of Tartary say, "On re-entering cultivated lands, the agitation, perplexity, and turmoil of civilization oppressed and suffocated us; the air seemed to fail us, and we felt every moment as if about to die of asphyxia." When I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest woods the thickest and most interminable and, to the citizen, most dismal, swamp.
He could not, any more than a man who has been looking at a tuft of
steppe grass through the mist and taking it for a tree can again take it for a tree after he has once recognized it to be a tuft of grass.