(1770), Shantung (1777), and Formosa (1786) were suppressed.

Early in the eighteenth century, the Turguts, a branch of the Kalmuck
Tartars, unable to endure the oppressive tyranny of their rulers,
trekked into Russia, and settled on the banks of the Volga. Some seventy
years later, once more finding the burden of taxation too heavy, they
again organized a trek upon a colossal scale. Turning their faces
eastward, they spent a whole year of fearful suffering and privation
in reaching the confines of Ili, a terribly diminished host. There they
received a district, and were placed under the jurisdiction of a khan.
This journey has been dramatically described by De Quincey in an essay
entitled "Revolt of the Tartars, or Flight of the Kalmuck Khan and his
people from the Russian territories to the Frontiers of China." Of
this contribution to literature it is only necessary to remark that the
scenes described, and especially the numbers mentioned, must be credited
chiefly to the perfervid imagination of the essayist, and also to
certain not very trustworthy documents sent home by Père Amiot. It is
probable that about one hundred and sixty thousand Turguts set out on
that long march, of whom only some seventy thousand reached their goal.

In 1781, the Dungans (or Tungans) of Shensi broke into open rebellion,
which was suppressed only after huge losses to the Imperialists. These
Dungans were Mahometan subjects of China, who in very early times
had colonized, under the name of Gao-tchan, in Kansuh and Shensi, and
subsequently spread westward into Turkestan. Some say that they were a
distinct race, who, in the fifth and sixth centuries, occupied the Tian
Shan range, with their capital at Harashar. The name, however, means, in
the dialect of Chinese Tartary, "converts," that is, to Mahometanism,
to which they were converted in the days of Timour by an Arabian
adventurer. We shall hear of them again in a still more serious