storal nomads of Arctic plains.]

Aridity is not the only climatic condition condemning a people to
nomadic life. Excessive cold, producing the tundra wastes of the far
north, has the same effect. Therefore, throughout Arctic Eurasia, from
the Lapp district of Norway to the Inland Chukches of eastern Siberia,
we have a succession of Hyperborean peoples pasturing their herds of
reindeer over the moss and lichen tundra, and supplementing their food
supply with hunting and fishing. The reindeer Chukches once confined
themselves to their peninsula, so long as the grazing grounds were
unexhausted; but they now range as far west as Yakutsk on the Lena
River, The Orochones of the Kolima River district in eastern Siberia,
who live chiefly by their reindeer, have small herds. A well-to-do
person will have 40 to 100 animals, and the wealthiest only 700, while
the Chukches with herds of 10,000 often seek the pasture of the Kolima
tundra.[1052] Farther west, the Samoyedes of northern Siberia and Russia
and the Zirians of the Petchora River range with their large herds
northward to the Yalmal Peninsula and Vaygats Isle in summer, and
southward in winter. [See map pages 103, 225.] Here a herd of fifty
head, which just suffices for the support of one family of four souls,
requires 10 square versts, or 4.44 square miles of tundra pasturage.[1053]
Hence population must forever remain too sparse ever to attain
historical significance. [See map page 8.] The Russian Lapps, too, lead
a semi-nomadic life. Each group has a particular summer and winter
settlement. The winter village is located usually inland in the Kola
Peninsula, where the forests lend shelter to the herds, and the summer
one near the tundra of the coast, where fishing is accessible. In
winter, like the nomads of the deserts, they add to their slender income
by the transport of goods by their reindeer and by service at the post
stations.[1054]

[Sidenote: Historical importance of steppe nomads.]

These nomads of the frozen north, scattered sparsely over the remote
periphery of the habitable world, have lacked the historical importance
which in all times has attached to the steppe nomads, owing to their
central location. The broad belt of deserts and grasslands which crosses
the old world diagonally between 10 deg. and 60 deg. North Latitude from the
Atlantic in Africa to the Pacific in Asia, either borders or encompasses
the old domains of culture found in river oases, allu