or
by their new lord and master, who supplied them with the food necessary,
established them in a fertile region of his empire, furnished them with
clothing, tools, a year's subsistence, grain for their fields, animals
for their pastures, and money to aid them in their other needs,
displaying towards his new subjects the most kindly and munificent
generosity. They were placed under better conditions than they had
enjoyed in Russia, though changed from a pastoral and nomadic people to
an agricultural one.

As for Zebek-Dorchi, his attempt on the life of the khan had produced a
feud between the two, which grew until it attracted the attention of the
emperor. Inquiring into the circumstances of the enmity, he espoused the
cause of Oubacha, which so infuriated the foe of the khan that he wove
nets of conspiracy even against the emperor himself. In the end
Zebek-Dorchi, with his accomplices, was invited to the imperial lodge,
and there, at a great banquet, his arts and plots were exposed, and he
and all his followers were assassinated at the feast.

As a durable monument to the mighty exodus of the Kalmucks, the most
remarkable circumstance of the kind in the whole history of nations, the
emperor Keen Lung ordered to be erected on the banks of the Ily, at the
margin of the steppes, a great monument of granite and brass, bearing
an inscription to the following effect:

By the Will of God,
Here, upon the brink of these Deserts,
Which from this Point begin and stretch away,
Pathless, treeless, waterless,
For thousands of miles, and along the margins of many mighty Nations,
Rested from their labors and from great afflictions
Under the shadow of the Chinese Wall,
And by the favor of KEEN LUNG, God's Lieutenant upon Earth,
The Ancient Children of the Wilderness, the Torgote Tartars,
Flying before the wrath of the Grecian Czar,
Wandering sheep who had strayed away from the Celestial
Empire in the year 1616,
But are now mercifully gathered again, after infinite sorrow,
Into the fold of their forgiving Shepherd.
Hallowed be the spot forever, and
Hallowed be the day,--September 8, 1771.
Amen.

_A MAGICAL TRANSFORMATION SCENE._

Catharine the Great earned her title cheaply, her patent of greatness
being due to the fact that she had the judgment to select great generals
and a great minister and the wisdom to cling to them. Russia