ter pastures, possibly one
hundred and fifty miles apart, visits its small arable patches in the
spring for his limited agricultural ventures, and returns to them in the
fall to reap their meager harvest. Its springs, streams, or wells assume
enhanced value, are things to be fought for, owing to the prevailing
aridity of summer; while ownership of a certain tract of desert or
grassland carries with it a certain right in the bordering settled
district as an area of plunder.[97]

The Kara-Kirghis stock, who have been located since the sixteenth
century on Lake Issik-Kul, long ago portioned out the land among the
separate families, and determined their limits by natural features of
the landscape.[98] Sven Hedin found on the Tarim River poles set up to
mark the boundary between the Shah-yar and Kuchar tribal pastures.[99]
John de Plano Carpini, traveling over southern Russia in 1246,
immediately after the Tartar conquest, found that the Dnieper, Don,
Volga and Ural rivers were all boundaries between domains of the various
millionaries or thousands, into which the Tartar horde was
organized.[100] The population of this vast country was distributed
according to the different degrees of fertility and the size of the
pastoral groups.[101] Volney observed the same distinction in the
distribution of the Bedouins of Syria. He found the barren cantons held
by small, widely scattered tribes, as in the Desert of Suez; but the
cultivable cantons, like the Hauran and the Pachalic of Aleppo, closely
dotted by the encampments of the pastoral owners.[102]

The large range of territory held by a nomadic tribe is all successively
occupied in the course of a year, but each part only for a short period
of time. A pastoral use of even a good district necessitates a move of
five or ten miles every few weeks. The whole, large as it may be, is
absolutely necessary for the annual support of the tribe. Hence any
outside encroachment upon their territory calls for the united
resistance of the tribe. This joint or social action is dictated by
their common interest in pastures and herds. The social administration
embodied in the apportionment of pastures among the families or clans
grows out of the systematic use of their territory, which represents a
closer relation between land and people than is found among purely
hunting tribes. Overcrowding by men or livestock, on the other hand,
puts a strain upon the social bond. When Abraham and Lot, typical