equired the Russians to withdraw
from that basin in 1689. But during the present century they have
been again attracted to this region, and the Government of St.
Petersburg is now fully alive to the advantages of a free access
by a large navigable stream to the Pacific seaboard. Hence, in
1851, Muraviov established the factory of Nikolaievsk, near the
mouth of the Amur, and those of Mariinsk and Alexandrovsk at either
end of the portage connecting that river with the Bay of Castries.
During the Crimean war its left bank was definitely secured by a
line of fortified posts, and in 1859 a ukase confirmed the possession
of a territory torn from China in time of peace. Lastly, in 1860,
while the Anglo-French forces were entering Pekin, Russia obtained
without a blow the cession of the region south of the Amur and east
of the Ussuri, stretching along the coast to the Corean frontier.

And thus was completed the reduction of the whole of North Asia,
a territory of itself alone far more extensive than the European
continent. In other respects there is, of course, no point of comparison
between these two regions. This Siberian world, where vast wildernesses
still remain to be explored, has a foreign trade surpassed by that
of many a third-rate European seaport, such as Dover or Boulogne.
Embracing a thirteenth part of the dry land on the surface of the
globe, its population falls short of that of London alone; it is
even more sparsely peopled than Caucasia and Turkestan, having
little over one inhabitant to 1,000 acres.

Accurate surveys of the physical features and frontier-lines are
still far from complete. Only quite recently the first circumnavigation
of the Old World round the northern shores of Siberia has been
accomplished by the Swedish explorer, Nordenskjoeld. The early attempts
made by Willoughby, Chancellor, and Burrough failed even to reach
the Siberian coast. Hoping later on to reach China by ascending
the Ob to the imaginary Lake Kitai--that is, Kathay, or China--the
English renewed their efforts to discover the "north-east passage,"
and in 1580 two vessels, commanded by Arthur Ket and Charles Jackman,
sailed for the Arctic Ocean; but they never got beyond the Kara
Sea. The Dutch succeeded no better, none of the voyages undertaken
by Barents and others between 1594 and 1597 reaching farther than
the Spitzbergen and Novaya Zembla waters. Nor were these limits
exceeded by Hendrick Hudson in 1608. This was the last