Agriculture could never have yielded much in these steppes, where rain is extremely rare in summer, where there are neither brooks nor wells for irrigation, and where hot winds scorch up every thing during the greater part of the fine season. It is only on the banks of the rivers that vegetation makes its appearance and the eye rests on cultivated fields and green pastures. There are indeed here and there a few depressions, where the grass retains its verdure during a part of the year, and some stunted trees spread their meagre branches over a less unkindly soil than that of the steppe; but these are unusual circumstances, and one must often travel hundreds of versts to find a single shrub. Such being the general configuration of the country, it may easily be imagined how cheerless is the aspect of those vast plains with nothing to vary their surface except the tumuli, and with no other boundaries than the sea. No one who is unaccustomed to that monotonous nature can long endure its influence. Those dreary wastes seem to him a boundless prison in which he vainly exerts himself without a hope of escape. And yet that flat and barren soil from which the eye turns away so contemptuously, has become a source of wealth to its present proprietors by the great success of the first experiments in Merino sheep-breeding. It was M. Rouvier, who first conceived the happy idea of turning the unproductive steppes into pasture. The Emperor Alexander, always ready to encourage liberal ideas, not only advanced the projector a sum of a hundred thousand rubles, but gave him even a man-of-war to go and make his first purchases in Spain, and on his return, granted him an immense extent of land, where the flocks, increasing rapidly, brought in a considerable fortune to M. Rouvier in a few years. His sons-in-law, General Potier and M. Vassal inherited it, and formed those great establishments of which we have spoken. Thenceforth the stock of merinos increased with incredible rapidity in New Russia; but an enormous fall in the price of wool soon occurred, and many proprietors have now reason to regret their outlay in that branch of rural economy, and are endeavouring to get rid of their flocks. The rams which fetched 500 or 600 francs in 1834 and 1835, were not worth more than 250 or 300 in 1841. In 1842, a landowner of our acquaintance had made up his mind to part with his best thorough-bred rams for 140 and even 100 francs a head. The exportation of wool increased, nevertheless, during the last years of our stay in Russia; but this was only because the landowners, after holding out a long while, found themselves at last constrained to accept prices one-half lower than those current a few years before, and to dispose of the wools they had long kept in their warehouses. Here was another instance of the disastrous consequences of the Russian prohibitive system; it has been as fatal to the wool-trade as to that in corn.
Clarofka is a village consisting of fifteen or twenty houses, each containing two families of peasants. It is some distance from the farm, which alone contains more dwellings and inmates than the whole village.