le her
Majesty with prisoners."

Here then arose, as before with the Cossacks, a race
for the Kalmucks with the regular armies of Russia, and 20
concurrently with nations as fierce and semi-humanized
as themselves, besides that they were stung into threefold
activity by the furies of mortified pride and military
abasement, under the eyes of the Turkish Sultan. The
forces, and more especially the artillery, of Russia were 25
far too overwhelming to permit the thought of a regular
opposition in pitched battles, even with a less dilapidated
state of their resources than they could reasonably expect
at the period of their arrival on the Torgau. In their
speed lay their only hope--in strength of foot, as before, 30
and not in strength of arm. Onward, therefore, the Kalmucks
pressed, marking the lines of their wide-extending
march over the sad solitudes of the steppes by a never-ending
chain of corpses. The old and the young, the
sick man on his couch, the mother with her baby--all
were left behind. Sights such as these, with the many
rueful aggravations incident to the helpless condition of
infancy--of disease and of female weakness abandoned
to the wolves amidst a howling wilderness--continued to 5
track their course through a space of full two thousand
miles; for so much at the least it was likely to prove,
including the circuits to which they were often compelled
by rivers or hostile tribes, from the point of starting on
the Wolga until they could reach their destined halting 10
ground on the east bank of the Torgau. For the first
seven weeks of this march their sufferings had been imbittered
by the excessive severity of the cold; and every
night--so long as wood was to be had for fires, either
from the lading of the camels, or from the desperate sacrifice 15
of their baggage wagons, or (as occasionally happened)
from the forests which skirted the banks of the many
rivers which crossed their path--no spectacle was more
frequent than that of a circle, composed of men, women,
and children, gathered by hundreds round a central fire, 20
all dead and stiff at the return of morning light. Myriads
were left behind from pure exhaustion, of whom none
had a chance, under the combined evils which beset
them, of surviving through the next twenty-four hours.
Frost, however, and snow at length ceased to persecute; 25
the vast extent of the march