to exercise this usurped pre-eminence over them. Tsé-ouang-raptan then
reigned over the Eleuths, and Ayouki over the Torgouths. These two
chiefs, being on bad terms with each other, had their mutual contests;
of which Ayouki, who was the weaker, feared that in the end he would
be the unhappy victim. He formed the project of withdrawing himself
forever from the domination of the Eleuths. He took secret measures
for securing the flight which he meditated, and sought safety, with
all his people, in the territories which are under the dominion of the
Russians. These permitted them to establish themselves in the country
of Etchil [the country between the Volga and the Jaik, a little to the
north of the Caspian Sea].... Oubaché, the present Khan of the
Torgouths, is the youngest grandson of Ayouki. The Russians never
ceasing to require him to furnish soldiers for incorporation into
their armies, and having at last carried off his own son to serve them
as a hostage, and being besides of a religion different from his, and
paying no respect to that of the Lamas, which the Torgouths profess,
Oubaché and his people at last determined to shake off a yoke which
was becoming daily more and more insupportable. After having secretly
deliberated among themselves, they concluded that they must abandon a
residence where they had so much to suffer, in order to come and live
more at ease in those parts of the dominion of China where the
religion professed is that of Fo. At the commencement of the eleventh
month of last year [December, 1770] they took the road, with their
wives, their children, and all their baggage, traversed the country of
the Hasaks [Cossacks], skirted Lake Palkaché-nor and the adjacent
deserts; and, about the end of the sixth month of this year [in
August, 1771], after having passed over more than ten thousand _lys_
during the space of the eight whole months of their journey, they
arrived at last on the frontiers of Charapen, not far from the borders
of Ily. I knew already that the Torgouths were on the march to come