he same _miao_ a monument which should fix the epoch of the
event and attest its authenticity; he himself composed the words for
the monument and wrote the characters with his own hand. How small
the number of persons that will have an opportunity of seeing and
reading this monument within the walls of the temple in which it is
erected!' Moreover the words of the monumental inscription in De
Quincey's copy of it are hardly what Kien Long would have written or
could have authorized. 'Wandering sheep who have strayed away from the
Celestial Empire in the year 1616' is the expression in De Quincey's
copy for that original secession of the Torgouth Tartars from their
eastern home on the Chinese borders for transference of themselves far
west to Russia, which was repaired and compensated by their return in
1771 under their Khan Oubache. As distinctly, on the other hand, the
memoir of Kien Long refers the date of the original secession to no
farther back than the reign of his own grandfather, the Emperor Kang
Hi, when Ayouki, the grandfather of Oubache, was Khan of the
Torgouths, and induced them to part company with their overbearing
kinsmen the Eleuths, and seek refuge within the Russian territories on
the Volga. In the comment of the Chinese mandarin on the Imperial
Memoir the time is more exactly indicated by the statement that the
Torgouths had remained 'more than seventy years' in their Russian
settlements when Oubache brought them back. This would refer us to
about 1700, or, at farthest, to between 1690 and 1700, for the
secession under Ayouki.

"The discrepancies are partly explained by the fact that De Quincey
followed Bergmann's account,--which account differs avowedly in some
particulars from that of the Chinese memoirs. In Bergmann I find the
original secession of the ancestors of Oubache's Kalmuck horde from
China to Russia _is_ pushed back to 1616, just as in De Quincey. But,
though De Quincey keeps by Bergmann when he pleases, he takes
liberties with Bergmann too, intensifies Bergmann's story throughout,
and adds much to it for which there is little or no suggestion in
Bergmann. For example, the incident which De Quincey introduces with
such terrific effect as the closing catastrophe of the march of the
fugitive Kalmucks before their arrival on the Chinese frontier,--the
incident of their thirst-maddened rush into the waters of Lake Tengis,
and their wallow there in bloody struggle with their Bashkir
pursuers,