now, in 1771, had marched all the way from the shores of the Caspian
to appeal to him for protection and for annexation to the Chinese
Empire were but the posterity of a horde who had formerly belonged to
that Empire, but had detached themselves from it, in the reign of Kang
Hi, by a contrary march westward to annex themselves to the Russian
dominions. The event of 1771, therefore, was gratifying to Kien Long
as completing his independent exertions among the Tartars on the
fringes of China by the voluntary re-settlement within those fringes,
and return to the Chinese allegiance, of a whole Tartar population
which had been astray, and under unfit and alien rule, for several
generations. With this explanation the following sentences from Kien
Long's Memoir, containing all its historical substance, will be fully
intelligible:

"'All those who at present compose the nation of the Torgouths,
unaffrighted by the dangers of a long and painful march, and full of
the single desire of procuring themselves for the future a better mode
of life and a more happy lot, have abandoned the parts which they
inhabited far beyond our frontiers, have traversed with a courage
proof against all difficulties a space of more than ten thousand
_lys_, and are come to range themselves in the number of my subjects.
Their submission, in my view of it, is not a submission to which they
have been inspired by fear, but is a voluntary and free submission, if
ever there was one.... The Torgouths are one of the branches of the
Eleuths. Four different branches of people formed at one time the
whole nation of the Tchong-kar. It would be difficult to explain their
common origin, respecting which indeed there is no very certain
knowledge. These four branches separated from each other, so that each
became a nation apart. That of the Eleuths, the chief of them all,
gradually subdued the others, and continued till the time of Kang Hi