ecisely in the light of a new and strange
land that our English ancestors regarded it. Cabot's voyage to the
{447} White Sea in the middle of the century was every whit as new an
adventure as was the voyage to India. Richard Chancellor and others
followed him and established a regular trade with Muscovy, [Sidenote:
1553] and through it and the Caspian with Asia. The rest of Europe,
west of Poland and the Turks, hardly heard of Russia or felt its impact
more than they now do of the Tartars of the Steppes.

But it was just at this time that Russia was taking the first strides
on the road to become a great power. How broadly operative were some
of the influences at work in Europe lies patent in the singular
parallel that her development offers to that of her more civilized
contemporaries. Just as despotism, consolidation, and conquest were
the order of the day elsewhere, so they were in the eastern plains of
Europe. Basil III [Sidenote: Basil III, 1505-33] struck down the
rights of cities, nobles and princes to bring the whole country under
his own autocracy. Ivan the Terrible, [Sidenote: Ivan IV, 1533-84]
called Czar of all the Russias, added to this policy one of extensive
territorial aggrandizement. Having humbled the Tartars he acquired
much land to the south and east, and then turned his attention to the
west, where, however, Poland barred his way to the Baltic. Just as in
its subsequent history, so then, one of the great needs of Russia was
for a good port. Another of her needs was for better technical
processes. Anticipating Peter the Great, Ivan endeavored to get German
workmen to initiate good methods, but he failed to accomplish much,
partly because Charles V forbade his subjects to go to add strength to
a rival state.

[Sidenote: Europe vs. Asia]

While Europe found most of the other continents as soft as butter to
her trenchant blade, she met her match in Asia. The theory of
Herodotus that the course of history is marked by alternate movements
east and west has been strikingly confirmed by {449} subsequent events.
In a secular grapple the two continents have heaved back and forth,
neither being able to conquer the other completely. If the empires of
Macedon and Rome carried the line of victory far to the orient, they
were avenged by the successive inroads of the Huns, the Saracens, the
Mongols and the Turks. If for the last four centuries the line has
again been pushed steadily back, until Euro