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. But if the Kalmucks
resolved to press forwards, regardless of their enemies--in
that case their attacks became so fierce and
overwhelming that the general safety seemed likely to be
brought into question; nor could any effectual remedy 15
be applied to the case, even for each separate day, except
by a most embarrassing halt and by countermarches
that, to men in their circumstances, were almost worse
than death. It will not be surprising that the irritation
of such a systematic persecution, superadded to a previous, 20
and hereditary hatred, and accompanied by the
stinging consciousness of utter impotence as regarded all
effectual vengeance, should gradually have inflamed the
Kalmuck animosity into the wildest expression of downright
madness and frenzy. Indeed, long before the 25
frontiers of China were approached, the hostility of both
sides had assumed the appearance much more of a
warfare amongst wild beasts than amongst creatures
acknowledging the restraints of reason or the claims of a
common nature.
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