The first point to be reached, before any hope of repose could be encouraged, was the River Jaik.  This was not 10 above 300 miles from the main point of departure on the Wolga; and, if the march thither was to be a forced one and a severe one, it was alleged, on the other hand, that the suffering would be the more brief and transient; one summary exertion, not to be repeated, and all was 15 achieved.  Forced the march was, and severe beyond example:  there the forewarning proved correct; but the promised rest proved a mere phantom of the wilderness—­a visionary rainbow, which fled before their hope-sick eyes, across these interminable solitudes, for seven months 20 of hardship and calamity, without a pause.  These sufferings, by their very nature and the circumstances under which they arose, were (like the scenery of the steppes) somewhat monotonous in their coloring and external features; what variety, however, there was, will be most 25 naturally exhibited by tracing historically the successive stages of the general misery exactly as it unfolded itself under the double agency of weakness still increasing from within and hostile pressure from without.  Viewed in this manner, under the real order of development, it is remarkable 30 that these sufferings of the Tartars, though under the moulding hands of accident, arrange themselves almost with a scenical propriety.  They seem combined as with the skill of an artist; the intensity of the misery advancing regularly with the advances of the march, and the stages of the calamity corresponding to the stages of the route; so that, upon raising the curtain which veils the great catastrophe, we behold one vast climax of anguish, towering upward by regular gradations as if constructed 5 artificially for picturesque effect—­a result which might not have been surprising had it been reasonable to anticipate the same rate of speed, and even an accelerated rate, as prevailing through the latter stages of the expedition.  But it seemed, on the contrary, most reasonable to 10 calculate upon a continual decrement in the rate of motion according to the increasing distance from the headquarters of the pursuing enemy.  This calculation, however, was defeated by the extraordinary circumstance that the Russian armies did not begin to close in very fiercely upon 15 the Kalmucks until after they had accomplished a distance of full 2000 miles:  1000 miles farther on the assaults became even more tumultuous and murderous:  and already the great shadows of the Chinese Wall were dimly descried, when the frenzy and acharnement of the pursuers and the 20 bloody desperation of the miserable fugitives had reached its uttermost extremity.  Let us briefly rehearse the main stages of the misery and trace the ascending steps of the tragedy, according to the great divisions of the route marked out by the central rivers of Asia. 25