the present hasty inroad, the Cossack chiefs were naturally
eager so to direct their efforts as to combine with
the service of the Empress some gratification to their own
party hatreds, more especially as the present was likely 5
to be their final opportunity for revenge if the Kalmuck
evasion should prosper. Having, therefore, concentrated
as large a body of Cossack cavalry as circumstances
allowed, they attacked the hostile _ouloss_ with a precipitation
which denied to it all means for communicating with 10
Oubacha; for the necessity of commanding an ample range
of pasturage, to meet the necessities of their vast flocks
and herds, had separated this _ouloss_ from the Khan's
headquarters by an interval of 80 miles; and thus it was,
and not from oversight, that it came to be thrown entirely 15
upon its own resources. These had proved insufficient:
retreat, from the exhausted state of their horses and
camels, no less than from the prodigious encumbrances
of their live stock, was absolutely out of the question:
quarter was disdained on the one side, and would not 20
have been granted on the other: and thus it had happened
that the setting sun of that one day (the thirteenth from
the first opening of the revolt) threw his parting rays upon
the final agonies of an ancient _ouloss_, stretched upon a
bloody field, who on that day's dawning had held and 25
styled themselves an independent nation.

Universal consternation was diffused through the wide
borders of the Khan's encampment by this disastrous
intelligence, not so much on account of the numbers
slain, or the total extinction of a powerful ally, as because 30