ABSTRACT
ON entering upon the Steppe all trace of human life disappears, and the traveller sees nothing but the heavens above him, and the boundless flat green carpet spread out around, while here and there small and regularly formed mounds rise up to his view. On either side he perceives also low ridges of hills; and upon these again, at intervals, larger conically-shaped mounds. The latter are occasionally surmounted by roughly cut stone figures, which look down like ghosts upon the silent desert. One while these mounds are seen in large numbers clustered together, forming as it were an immense cemetery ; at another, larger isolated ones extend in lines along the heights, until they disappear altogether, or rise up only at distant intervals in the Steppe.
