Biographical Memoir of Peter Simon Pallas, 2J29 



tary, and made irruptions into Poland and Hungary. But after 

 a few centuries, fortune became adverse to them. Driven 

 out of China and Persia, destroyed in India, subjected to the 

 Russians in the western parts of their ancient conquests, and to 

 the Chinese in their original country, they have only pre- 

 served independent establishments in some districts to the 

 west of the Caspian Sea. Having returned to the pastoral life, 

 most of them wander, like their ancestors, in the vast deserts of 

 central Asia, waiting until the discord or decay of the neigh- 

 bouring empires permits some enterprising adventurer to collect 

 them for new conquests. This is what Russia and China seek 

 to prevent, by dividing them, reducing their number, and 

 sometimes transplanting them, when they mutiny, to enormous 

 distances. And yet, in this state of subjection, these unfortunate 

 beings preserve the pride of rank and nobility ; they have long 

 genealogies ; their chiefs cabal against one another, and intrigue 

 at the court of their sovereigns for augmentations of authority. 

 The Grand Lama, who governs the consciences of all these tribes 

 by a hierarchy almost as absolute as that of the Romish church, 

 gives a sacred character to this authority by his patents, which 

 thus become in his hands a means of intrigue and of disturb- 

 ances. These continual agitations cannot be better represented 

 than by the recital of an event which Pallas relates in detail, 

 and which may even afford us an idea of those famous migra- 

 tions of tribes which form so remarkable an epoch in the history 

 of Europe. 



An entire tribe, which, after the conquest of the last Emperor 

 of China, Kien-Long, had taken refuge in the Russian territory, 

 and which had settled, in 1 758, in the deserts of the country of 

 Astracan, having somehow become discontented, and being more- 

 over excited by the intrigues of their principal Lama, resolved, 

 twelve years after^ to return to the countries subjected by the 

 Chinese. The preparations necessaiy for their journey were 

 continued during several months, without any one divulging the 

 secret. At length, on a fixed day, in the beginning of 1771, 

 the whole nation, men, women, and children, to the number of 

 more than 60,000 families, emigrated in three divisions, carry- 

 ing away their tents, their flocks, and their baggage, and taking 



JANUABY — MAECH 1828. Q 



