of of that date did not relish the
presence of his unruly guests, with their free ideas of property rights,
and suggested to Yermak that Siberia offered a promising field for a
ready sword. He would supply him with food and arms if he saw fit to
lead an expedition thither.

The suggestion accorded well with Yermak's humor. He at once began to
enlist volunteers for the enterprise, adding to his own Cossack band a
reinforcement of Russians and Tartars and of German and Polish prisoners
of war, until he had sixteen hundred and thirty-six men under his
command. With these he crossed the mountains in 1580, and terrified the
natives to submission with his fire-arms, a form of weapon new to them.
Making their way down the Tura and Taghil Rivers, the adventurers
crossed the immense untrodden forests of Tobol, and Kutchum, the Tartar
khan, was assailed in his capital town of Ister, near where Tobolsk now
stands.

Many battles with the Tartars were fought, Ister was taken, the khan
fled to the steppes, and his cousin was made prisoner by the
adventurers. Yermak now, having added by his valor a great domain to the
Russian empire, purchased the favor of Ivan IV. by the present of this
new kingdom. He made his way to the Irtish and Obi, opened trade with
the rich khanate of Bokhara, south of the desert, and in various ways
sought to consolidate the conquest he had made. But misfortune came to
the conqueror. One day, being surprised by the Tartars when unprepared,
he leaped into the Irtish in full armor and tried to swim its rapid
current. The armor he wore had been sent him by the czar, and had served
him well in war. It proved too heavy for his powers of swimming, bore
him beneath the hungry waters, and brought the career of the victorious
brigand to an end. After his death his dismayed followers fled from
Siberia, yielding it to Tartar hands again.

Yermak--in his way a rival of Cortez and Pizarro--gained by his conquest
the highest fame among the Russian people. They exalted him to the level
of a hero, and their church has raised him to the rank of a saint, at
whose tomb miracles are performed. As regards the Russian saints, it may
here be remarked that they have been constructed, as a rule, from very
unsanctified timber, as may be seen from the examples we have heretofore
given. Not only the people and the priests but the poets have paid their
tribute to Yermak's fame, epic poems having been written about his
exploits and his