The old and the
young, the sick man on his couch, the mother with her baby--all were
left behind. Sights such as these, with the many rueful aggravations
incident to the helpless condition of infancy--of disease and of female
weakness abandoned to the wolves amidst a howling wilderness, continued
to track their course through a space of full two thousand miles; for
so much at the least, it was likely to prove, including the circuits to
which they were often compelled by rivers or hostile tribes, from the
point of starting on the Wolga until they could reach their destined
halting-ground on the east bank of the Torgau. For the first seven
weeks of this march their sufferings had been embittered by the
excessive severity of the cold; and every night--so long as wood was to
be had for fires, either from the lading of the camels, or from the
desperate sacrifice of their baggage-wagons, or (as occasionally
happened) from the forests which skirted the banks of the many rivers
which crossed their path--no spectacle was more frequent than that of a
circle, composed of men, women, and children, gathered by hundreds
round a central fire, all dead and stiff at the return of morning
light. Myriads were left behind from pure exhaustion of whom none had a
chance, under the combined evils which beset them, of surviving through
the next twenty-four hours.
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