These people, “more fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea,” stuck to the unhappy Kalmucks like a swarm of enraged hornets.  And very often, while they were attacking them in the rear, their advanced parties and 30 flanks were attacked with almost equal fury by the people of the country which they were traversing; and with good reason, since the law of self-preservation had now obliged the fugitive Tartars to plunder provisions and to forage wherever they passed.  In this respect their condition was a constant oscillation of wretchedness; for sometimes, pressed by grinding famine, they took a circuit of perhaps a hundred miles, in order to strike into a land 5 rich in the comforts of life; but in such a land they were sure to find a crowded population, of which every arm was raised in unrelenting hostility, with all the advantages of local knowledge, and with constant preoccupation of all the defensible positions, mountain passes, or bridges. 10 Sometimes, again, wearied out with this mode of suffering, they took a circuit of perhaps a hundred miles, in order to strike into a land with few or no inhabitants.  But in such a land they were sure to meet absolute starvation.  Then, again, whether with or without this 15 plague of starvation, whether with or without this plague of hostility in front, whatever might be the “fierce varieties” of their misery in this respect, no rest ever came to their unhappy rear; post equitem sedet atra cura:  it was a torment like the undying worm of conscience. 20 And, upon the whole, it presented a spectacle altogether unprecedented in the history of mankind.  Private and personal malignity is not unfrequently immortal; but rare indeed is it to find the same pertinacity of malice in a nation.  And what imbittered the interest was that the 25 malice was reciprocal.  Thus far the parties met upon equal terms; but that equality only sharpened the sense of their dire inequality as to other circumstances.  The Bashkirs were ready to fight “from morn till dewy eve.”  The Kalmucks, on the contrary, were always obliged to 30 run.  Was it from their enemies as creatures whom they feared?  No; but towards their friends—­towards that final haven of China—­as what was hourly implored by the prayers of their wives and the tears of their children.  But, though they fled unwillingly, too often they fled in vain—­being unwillingly recalled.  There lay the torment.  Every day the Bashkirs fell upon them; every day the same unprofitable battle was renewed; as a matter of course, the Kalmucks recalled part of their 5 advanced guard to fight them; every day the battle raged for hours, and uniformly with the same result.  For, no sooner did the Bashkirs find themselves too heavily pressed, and that the Kalmuck march had been retarded by some hours, than they retired into the boundless 10 deserts, where all pursuit was hopeless.