Page:Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, Volume 1 (2nd edition).djvu/267

 Rh Abulghazi also observes, that "les habitans de la ville font pour la plupart profession du culte de Mahomet"—Marsden, vol. i. p. 153; and a preceding sentence in the same quotation leads the reader to believe that the Kalmuks formed the smaller part of the population; which is affirmed by Tooranee merchants to have been the case when Khoten was conquered by the Chinese. But the victors deported all the Kalmuks of that country to the cities of Eela and their districts, in the latter of which their population amounts to about two hundred thousand families, whose residences extend for six days' journey from the cities of Eela in every direction. The breeding of cattle forms the principal employment of the Kalmuks. These are camels, horses, cows, sheep, and goats; and for every hundred head they raise, they pay one to the emperor as a quit-rent.

'The Kalmuks bring annually from ten to twenty thousand three-year-old geldings to Eela for sale;—they are ordinarily from thirteen and a half to fourteen hands high, and are sold in droves at about twelve for a yamboo, or ingot of silver, which, at the currency of one hundred and eighty rupees, gives an average of fifteen rupees a horse. These horses are taken to Aksoo, Yarkund, Kashgar, Indejan, Khoten, and even to Bokhara, and resold principally for carrying loads of merchandise.

'The warlike character and vast numbers of the wandering and widely-spread family of the Kalmuks, which are scattered over a large portion of Russia, Siberia, and China, afford occasional employment to the Chinese government in practising means to prevent their military spirit producing the political aggrandizement of the Kalmuk nation. One expedient is that of dividing their numbers by transporting their masses, by portions, into different parts of the empire when they become formidably great in any one district. The other—and for the honour of human nature one would wish it were an exaggeration—consists in destroying the chief of each horde; for it is asserted, that when the son of a chief attains that age at which his mother transfers him from her care to that of his father, or from ten to fifteen, the latter is always taken off by poison administered by order of the Chinese