About eleven o'clock
Those who knew the country judged that the Kalmucks were making for a large fresh-water lake about seven or eight miles distant ; they were right ; and to that point the Imperial cavalry was ordered up ; and it was precisely in that spot , and about three hours after and at noon-day on the 8th of September , that the great Exodus of the Kalmuck Tartars was brought to a final close , and with a scene of such memorable and hellish fury , as formed an appropriate winding-up to an expedition in all its parts and details so awfully disastrous . The Emperor was not personally present , or at least he saw whatever he _ did _ see from too great a distance to discriminate its individual features ; but he records in his written memorial the report made to him of this scene by some of his own officers . The lake of Tengis , near the frightful desert of Kobi , lay in a hollow amongst hills of a moderate height , ranging generally from two to three thousand feet high . About eleven o'clock in the forenoon , the Chinese cavalry reached the summit of a road which led through a cradle-like dip in the mountains right down upon the margin of the lake . From this pass , elevated about two thousand feet above the level of the water , they continued to descend , by a very winding and difficult road , for an hour and a half ; and during the whole of this descent they were compelled to be inactive spectators of the fiendish spectacle below . The Kalmucks , reduced by this time from about six hundred thousand souls to two hundred thousand , and after enduring for two months and a half the miseries we have previously described -- outrageous heat , famine , and the destroying scimitar of the Kirghises and the Bashkirs , had for the last ten days been traversing a hideous desert , where no vestiges were seen of vegetation , and no drop of water could be found . Camels and men were already so overladen , that it was a mere impossibility that they should carry a tolerable sufficiency for the passage of this frightful wilderness .