In memory of this happy day his Majesty
had built on the mountain which shelters from the heat (Pi-chou-chan)
a vast and magnificent _miao_, in honor of the reunion of all the
followers of Fo in one and the same worship; it had just been
completed when Oubache and the other princes of his nation arrived at
Ge-hol. In memory of an event which has contributed to make this same
year forever famous in our annals, it has been his Majesty's will to
erect in the 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.
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