nothing but primeval forests in
all the pomp of their exuberant and gigantic vegetation. The soul seems
crushed beneath a nature all powerful and majestic. There is nothing of
the kind in Tartary. There are no towns, no edifices, no arts, no
industry, no cultivation, no forests; everywhere it is prairie, sometimes
interrupted by immense lakes, by majestic rivers, by rugged and imposing
mountains; sometimes spreading out into vast limitless plains. There, in
these verdant solitudes, the bounds of which seem lost in the remote
horizon, you might imagine yourself gently rocking on the calm waves of
some broad ocean. The aspect of the prairies of Mongolia excites neither
joy nor sorrow, but rather a mixture of the two, a sentiment of gentle,
religious melancholy, which gradually elevates the soul, without wholly
excluding from its contemplation the things of this world; a sentiment
which belongs rather to Heaven than to earth, and which seems in
admirable conformity with the nature of intellect served by organs.

You sometimes in Tartary come upon plains more animated than those you
have just traversed; they are those, whither the greater supply of water
and the choicest pastures have attracted for a time a number of nomadic
families. There you see rising in all directions tents of various
dimensions, looking like balloons newly inflated, and just about to take
their flight into the air. Children, with a sort of hod at their backs,
run about collecting argols, which they pile up in heaps around their
respective tents. The matrons look after the calves, make tea in the
open air, or prepare milk in various ways; the men, mounted on fiery
horses, and armed with a long pole, gallop about, guiding to the best
pastures the great herds of cattle which undulate, in the distance all
around, like waves of the sea.

All of a sudden these pictures, so full of animation, disappear, and you
see nothing of that which of late was so full of life. Men, tents,
herds, all have vanished in the twinkling of an eye. You merely see in
the desert heaps of embers, half-extinguished fires, and a few bones, of
which birds of prey are disputing the possession. Such are the sole
vestiges which announce that a Mongol tribe has just passed that way. If
you ask the reason of these abrupt migrations, it is simply this:--the
animals having devoured all the grass that grew in the vicinity, the
chief had given the signal for departure; and all th