outlying bodies of the horde,—­who kept falling in at various distances upon the first and second day’s march.  From sixty to eighty thousand of those who 20 were the best mounted stayed behind the rest of the tribes, with purposes of devastation and plunder more violent than prudence justified or the amiable character of the Khan could be supposed to approve.  But in this, as in other instances, he was completely overruled by the 25 malignant counsels of Zebek-Dorchi.  The first tempest of the desolating fury of the Tartars discharged itself upon their own habitations.  But this, as cutting off all infirm looking backward from the hardships of their march, had been thought so necessary a measure by all 30 the chieftains that even Oubacha himself was the first to authorize the act by his own example.  He seized a torch previously prepared with materials the most durable as well as combustible, and steadily applied it to the timbers of his own palace.  Nothing was saved from the general wreck except the portable part of the domestic utensils and that part of the woodwork which could be applied to the manufacture of the long Tartar lances.  This chapter in their memorable day’s work being finished, 5 and the whole of their villages throughout a district of ten thousand square miles in one simultaneous blaze, the Tartars waited for further orders.

These, it was intended, should have taken a character of valedictory vengeance, and thus have left behind to the 10 Czarina a dreadful commentary upon the main motives of their flight.  It was the purpose of Zebek-Dorchi that all the Russian towns, churches, and buildings of every description should be given up to pillage and destruction, and such treatment applied to the defenceless inhabitants 15 as might naturally be expected from a fierce people already infuriated by the spectacle of their own outrages, and by the bloody retaliations which they must necessarily have provoked.  This part of the tragedy, however, was happily intercepted by a providential disappointment at 20 the very crisis of departure.  It has been mentioned already that the motive for selecting the depth of winter as the season of flight (which otherwise was obviously the very worst possible) had been the impossibility of effecting a junction sufficiently rapid with the tribes on 25 the west of the Wolga, in the absence of bridges, unless by a natural bridge of ice.  For this one advantage the Kalmuck leaders had consented to aggravate by a thousand-fold the calamities inevitable to a rapid flight over boundless tracts of country with women, children, and 30 herds of cattle—­for this one single advantage; and yet, after all, it was lost.  The reason never has been explained satisfactorily, but the fact was such.  Some have said that the signals were not properly concerted for marking the moment of absolute departure—­that