nd his small band of picked
fighters were more than a match for the wretchedly armed and
craven-spirited Tartars, who fled at the sound of firearms. In 1581 the
settlement, called Sibir, fell to the invaders; and, though they soon
abandoned this rude encampment for a new foundation, the town of
Tobolsk, yet the name Siberia recalls their pride at the conquest of the
enemy's capital. The traditional skill of the Cossacks in the handling
of boats greatly aided their advance, and despite the death of Jermak in
battle, his men pressed on and conquered nearly the half of Siberia
within a decade. What Drake and the sea-dogs of Devon were then doing
for England on the western main, was being accomplished for Russia by
the ex-pirate and his band from the Volga. The two expansive movements
were destined finally to meet on the shores of the Pacific in the
northern creeks of what is now British Columbia.

The later stages in Russian expansion need not detain us here. The
excellence of the Cossack methods in foraying, pioneer-work, and the
forming of military settlements, consolidated the Muscovite conquests.
The Tartars were fain to submit to the Czar, or to flee to the nomad
tribes of Central Asia or Northern China. The invaders reached the River
Lena in the year 1630; and some of their adventurers voyaged down the
Amur, and breasted the waves of the Pacific in 1636. Cossack bands
conquered Kamchatka in 1699-1700[483].

[Footnote 483: Vladimir, _Russia en the Pacific._]

Meanwhile the first collision between the white and the yellow races
took place on the River Amur, which the Chinese claimed as their own. At
first the Russians easily prevailed; but in the year 1689 they suffered
a check. New vigour was then manifested in the councils of Pekin, and
the young Czar, Peter the Great, in his longing for triumphs over Swedes
and Turks, thought lightly of gains at the expense of the "celestials."
He therefore gave to Russian energies that trend westwards and
southwards, which after him marked the reigns of Catharine II.,
Alexander I., and, in part, of Nicholas I. The surrender of the Amur
valley to China in 1689 ended all efforts of Russia in that direction
for a century and a half. Many Russians believe that the earlier impulse
was sounder and more fruitful in results for Russia than her meddling in
the wars of the French Revolution and Empire.

Not till 1846 did Russia resume her march down the valley of the Amur;
and then the n