achieved. Forced the march was, and severe beyond
example: there the forewarning proved correct; but the
promised rest proved a mere phantom of the wilderness--a
visionary rainbow, which fled before their hope-sick
eyes, across these interminable solitudes, for seven months 20
of hardship and calamity, without a pause. These sufferings,
by their very nature and the circumstances under
which they arose, were (like the scenery of the steppes)
somewhat monotonous in their coloring and external
features; what variety, however, there was, will be most 25
naturally exhibited by tracing historically the successive
stages of the general misery exactly as it unfolded itself
under the double agency of weakness still increasing from
within and hostile pressure from without. Viewed in this
manner, under the real order of development, it is remarkable 30
that these sufferings of the Tartars, though under
the moulding hands of accident, arrange themselves
almost with a scenical propriety. They seem combined
as with the skill of an artist; the intensity of the misery
advancing regularly with the advances of the march, and
the stages of the calamity corresponding to the stages
of the route; so that, upon raising the curtain which
veils the great catastrophe, we behold one vast climax of
anguish, towering upward by regular gradations as if constructed 5
artificially for picturesque effect--a result which
might not have been surprising had it been reasonable to
anticipate the same rate of speed, and even an accelerated
rate, as prevailing through the latter stages of the expedition.
But it seemed, on the contrary, most reasonable to 10
calculate upon a continual decrement in the rate of motion