The Tsiganes or Romany are very numerous in Southern Russia. They pass from town to town, from village to village, sometimes begging or stealing, sometimes exercising their peculiar trades and industries, and providing for their wants more honestly. They never establish themselves permanently in any place. They halt wherever the evening shades may chance to overtake them, stretch a few fragments of woollen stuff across the poles of their vehicles to serve for tents, kindle a fire with herbs, twigs, and dry branches, partly to cook their food, and partly to scare away the wild beasts, and fling themselves down pell-mell to sleep on mats or the naked earth. When morning dawns, they resume their life-long march--giving no thought to the future, no dream to the past--without object, hope, or purpose. [Illustration: NIGHT ENCAMPMENT OF GIPSIES IN THE STEPPE.] The Steppes of the interior of Asia, from the Aral river to the Ala-Tau mountains, are occupied by the great nation of the Kirghiz, who have, from time immemorial, been divided into the Great, Middle, and Little Hordes. To the former belongs the territory north of the Ala-Tau, with portions of China and Tartary. They are subject to the sovereigns of the countries in which they dwell. The Middle Horde inhabits the district between the Ishim, Irtish, Lake Balkhush, and Khokan. The Little (and far most numerous) Horde wanders over the grassy plains bounded by the Yamba and the Ural, Turkistan (now a Russian province), and the country of the Middle Horde (or Siberian Kirghizes). Altogether, the Kirghizes number upwards of one and a quarter million of souls. They are of Turco-Tartaric origin, and Southern Siberia is their mother country.[37] Though owing a nominal allegiance to the Russian Czar and the Chinese Emperor, they are virtually independent, and obey only their sultans or chiefs. They are frequently at war. Many live wholly by brigandage; suddenly descending, under cover of night, upon the richest _aouls_, or villages, slaying all who resist, and carrying off horses, cattle, and all objects of value, and men, women and children, whom they sell as slaves. These nocturnal razzias are designated, in the Kirghiz language, _barantas_. The _yourt_, or tent of these nomades, resembles the kibitka of the Kalmüks. We borrow a description of one belonging to a Kirghiz chief from Mr. Atkinson's entertaining pages.