well as combustible, and steadily applied it to the timbers
of his own palace. Nothing was saved from the general
wreck except the portable part of the domestic utensils
and that part of the woodwork which could be applied
to the manufacture of the long Tartar lances. This
chapter in their memorable day's work being finished, 5
and the whole of their villages throughout a district of
ten thousand square miles in one simultaneous blaze, the
Tartars waited for further orders.

These, it was intended, should have taken a character of
valedictory vengeance, and thus have left behind to the 10
Czarina a dreadful commentary upon the main motives
of their flight. It was the purpose of Zebek-Dorchi that
all the Russian towns, churches, and buildings of every
description should be given up to pillage and destruction,
and such treatment applied to the defenceless inhabitants 15
as might naturally be expected from a fierce people
already infuriated by the spectacle of their own outrages,
and by the bloody retaliations which they must necessarily
have provoked. This part of the tragedy, however, was
happily intercepted by a providential disappointment at 20
the very crisis of departure. It has been mentioned
already that the motive for selecting the depth of winter
as the season of flight (which otherwise was obviously
the very worst possible) had been the impossibility of
effecting a junction sufficiently rapid with the tribes on 25
the west of the Wolga, in the absence of bridges, unless
by a natural bridge of ice. For this one advantage the
Kalmuck leaders had consented to aggravate by a thousand-fold