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Page 25
Apprehending the real state of affairs, the Emperor
instantly perceived that the first act of his fatherly care
for these erring children (as he esteemed them), now
returning to their ancient obedience, must be--to deliver
them from their pursuers. And this was less difficult
than might have been supposed. Not many miles in the
rear was a body of well-appointed cavalry, with a strong
detachment of artillery, who always attended the Emperor's 5
motions. These were hastily summoned. Meantime
it occurred to the train of courtiers that some danger
might arise to the Emperor's person from the proximity
of a lawless enemy, and accordingly he was induced to
retire a little to the rear. It soon appeared, however, to 10
those who watched the vapory shroud in the desert, that
its motion was not such as would argue the direction of
the march to be exactly upon the pavilion, but rather in
a diagonal line, making an angle of full 45 degrees with
that line in which the imperial _cort�ge_ had been standing, 15
and therefore with a distance continually increasing.
Those who knew the country judged that the Kalmucks
were making for a large fresh-water lake about seven or
eight miles distant. They were right; and to that point
the imperial cavalry was ordered up; and it was precisely 20
in that spot, and about three hours after, and at noonday
on the 8th of September, that the great Exodus of the
Kalmuck Tartars was brought to a final close, and with a
scene of such memorable and hellish fury as formed an
appropriate winding up to an expedition in all its parts 25
and details so awfully disastrous. The Emperor was not
personally present, or at least he saw whatever he _did_ see
from too great a distance to discriminate its individual
features; but he records in his written memorial the
report made to him of this scene by some of his own 30
officers.
The Lake of Tengis, near the frightful Desert of Kobi,
lay in a hollow amongst hills of a moderate height, ranging
generally from two to three thousand feet high. About
eleven o'clock in the forenoon, the Chinese cavalry
reached the summit of a road which led through a cradle-like
dip in the mountains right down upon the margin of
the lake. From this pass, elevated about two thousand
feet above the level of the water, they continued to 5
descend, by a very winding and difficult road, for an hour
and a half; and during the whole of this descent they were
compelled to be inactive spectators of the fiendish spectacle
below. The Kalmucks, reduced by this time from
about six hundred thousand souls to two hundred and 10
sixty thousand, and after enduring for two months and a
half the miseries we have previously described--outrageous
heat, famine, and the destroying scimiter of the
Kirghises and the Bashkirs--had for the last ten days
been traversing a hideous desert, where no vestiges were 15
seen of vegetation, and no drop of water could be found.
Camels and men were already so overladen that it was a
mere impossibility that they should carry a tolerable sufficiency
for the passage of this frightful wilderness. On
the eighth day the wretched daily allowance, which had 20
been continually diminishing, failed entirely; and thus, for
two days of insupportable fatigue, the horrors of thirst
had been carried to the fiercest extremity. Upon this
last morning, at the sight of the hills and the forest
scenery, which announced to those who acted as guides 25
the neighborhood of the Lake of Tengis, all the people
rushed along with maddening eagerness to the anticipated
solace. The day grew hotter and hotter, the people more
and more exhausted; and gradually, in the general rush
forward to the lake, all discipline and command were lost--all 30
attempts to preserve a rear guard were neglected--the
wild Bashkirs rode on amongst the encumbered people
and slaughtered them by wholesale, and almost
without resistance. Screams and tumultuous shouts proclaimed
the progress of the massacre; but none heeded--none
halted; all alike, pauper or noble, continued to rush
on with maniacal haste to the waters--all with faces
blackened by the heat preying upon the liver and with
tongue drooping from the mouth. The cruel Bashkir was 5
affected by the same misery, and manifested the same
symptoms of his misery, as the wretched Kalmuck; the
murderer was oftentimes in the same frantic misery as his
murdered victim--many, indeed (an ordinary effect of
thirst), in both nations had become lunatic, and in this 10
state, whilst mere multitude and condensation of bodies
alone opposed any check to the destroying scimiter and
the trampling hoof, the lake was reached; and to that
the whole vast body of enemies rushed, and together
continued to rush, forgetful of all things at that moment 15
but of one almighty instinct. This absorption of the
thoughts in one maddening appetite lasted for a single
half hour; but in the next arose the final scene of parting
vengeance. Far and wide the waters of the solitary lake
were instantly dyed red with blood and gore: here rode a 20
party of savage Bashkirs, hewing off heads as fast as the
swaths fall before the mower's scythe; there stood unarmed
Kalmucks in a death grapple with their detested foes,
both up to the middle in water, and oftentimes both sinking
together below the surface, from weakness or from 25
struggles, and perishing in each other's arms. Did the
Bashkirs at any point collect into a cluster for the sake
of giving impetus to the assault? Thither were the camels
driven in fiercely by those who rode them, generally
women or boys; and even these quiet creatures were 30
forced into a share in this carnival of murder by trampling
down as many as they could strike prostrate with the
lash of their fore-legs. Every moment the water grew
more polluted; and yet every moment fresh myriads came
up to the lake and rushed in, not able to resist their
frantic thirst, and swallowing large draughts of water,
visibly contaminated with the blood of their slaughtered
compatriots. Wheresoever the lake was shallow enough
to allow of men raising their heads above the water, there, 5
for scores of acres, were to be seen all forms of ghastly
fear, of agonizing struggle, of spasm, of death, and the
fear of death--revenge, and the lunacy of revenge--until
the neutral spectators, of whom there were not a
few, now descending the eastern side of the lake, at length 10
averted their eyes in horror. This horror, which seemed
incapable of further addition, was, however, increased
by an unexpected incident. The Bashkirs, beginning to
perceive here and there the approach of the Chinese
cavalry, felt it prudent--wheresoever they were sufficiently 15
at leisure from the passions of the murderous
scene--to gather into bodies. This was noticed by the
governor of a small Chinese fort built upon an eminence
above the lake; and immediately he threw in a broadside,
which spread havoc among the Bashkir tribe. As often 20
as the Bashkirs collected into _globes_ and _turms_ as their
only means of meeting the long line of descending
Chinese cavalry, so often did the Chinese governor of the
fort pour in his exterminating broadside; until at length
the lake, at its lower end, became one vast seething 25
caldron of human bloodshed and carnage. The Chinese
cavalry had reached the foot of the hills; the Bashkirs,
attentive to _their_ movements, had formed; skirmishes had
been fought; and, with a quick sense that the contest was
henceforward rapidly becoming hopeless, the Bashkirs 30
and Kirghises began to retire. The pursuit was not as
vigorous as the Kalmuck hatred would have desired.
But, at the same time, the very gloomiest hatred could
not but find, in their own dreadful experience of the
Asiatic deserts, and in the certainty that these wretched
Bashkirs had to repeat that same experience a second
time, for thousands of miles, as the price exacted by a
retributary Providence for their vindictive cruelty--not
the very gloomiest of the Kalmucks, or the least reflecting, 5
but found in all this a retaliatory chastisement more
complete and absolute than any which their swords and
lances could have obtained or human vengeance could
have devised.
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