rs--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; th