ew home four thousand miles away. More
than once--many times, apparently--in the history of the past such
migrations have taken place. But those were warlike movements, with
conquest as their aim. This was a peaceful migration, the only desire of
those concerned being to be let alone. This desire was not granted, and
death and terror marked every step of their frightful journey.

A century and a half earlier the fathers of these people, the Kalmuck
Tartars, had left their homes in the Chinese empire and wandered west,
finding a resting-place at last on the Volga River, in the Russian
realm. Here they would have been well content to remain but for the arts
and designs of one man, Zebek-Dorchi by name, who, ambitious to be made
khan of the tribe, and not being favored in his desires by the Russian
court, determined to remove the whole Kalmuck nation beyond the reach of
Russian control.

This was no easy matter to do. Russia had spread to the east until the
whole width of Asia lay within its broad expanse and its boundary
touched the Pacific waves. To reach China, the mighty Mongolian plain
had to be crossed, largely a desert, swarming with hostile tribes; death
and disaster were likely to haunt every mile of the way; and a general
tomb in the wilderness, rather than a home in a new land, was the most
probable destiny of the migrating horde.

Zebek-Dorchi was confronted with a difficult task. He had to induce the
tribesmen to consent to the new movement, and that so quickly that a
start could be made before the Russians became aware of the scheme.
Otherwise the path would be lined with armies and the movement checked.

Oubacha, the khan of the Kalmucks, was a brave but weak man. The
conspirator controlled him, and through him the people. On a fixed day,
through a false alarm that the Kirghises and Bashkirs had made an inroad
upon the Kalmuck lands, he succeeded in gathering a great Kalmuck horde,
eighty thousand in all, at a point out of reach of Russian ears. Here,
with subtle eloquence, he told them of the oppressions of Russia, of her
insults to the Kalmucks, her contempt for their religion, and her design
to reduce them to slavery, and declared that a plan had been devised to
rob them of their eldest sons. By a skilful mixture of truth and
falsehood he roused their fears and their anger, and at length he
proposed that they should leave their fields and make a rapid march to
the Temba or some other great river, from