ew movement was partly due to British action. At that time
the hostility of Russia and Britain was becoming acute on Asiatic and
Turkish questions. Further, the first Anglo-Chinese War (1840-42) led to
the cession of Hong-Kong to the distant islanders, who also had five
Chinese ports opened to their trade. This enabled Russia to pose as the
protector of China, and to claim points of vantage whence her covering
wings might be extended over that Empire. The statesmen of Pekin had
little belief in the genuineness of these offers, especially in view of
the thorough exploration of the Amur region and the Gulf of Okhotsk
which speedily ensued.

The Czar, in fact, now inaugurated a forward Asiatic policy, and
confided it to an able governor, Muravieff (1847). The new departure was
marked by the issue of an imperial ukase (1851) ordering the Russian
settlers beyond Lake Baikal to conform to the Cossack system; that is,
to become liable to military duties in return for the holding of land in
the more exposed positions. Three years later Muravieff ordered 6000
Cossacks to migrate from these trans-Baikal settlements to the land
newly acquired from China on the borders of Manchuria[484]. In the same
year the Russians established a station at the mouth of the Amur, and in
1853 gained control over part of the Island of Saghalien.

[Footnote 484: Popowski, _The Rival Powers in Central Asia_, p. 13.]

For the present, then, everything seemed to favour Russia's forward
policy. The tribes on the Amur were passive; an attack of an
Anglo-French squadron on Petropaulovsk, a port in Kamchatka, failed
(Aug. 1854); and the Russians hoped to be able to harry British commerce
from this and other naval bases in the Pacific. Finally, the rupture
with England and France, and the beginning of the Taeping rebellion in
China, induced the Court of Pekin to agree to Russia's demands for the
Amur boundary, and for a subsequent arrangement respecting the ownership
of the districts between the mouth of that river and the bay on which
now stands the port of Vladivostok (May 15, 1858). The latter concession
left the door open for Muravieff to push on Russia's claims to this
important wedge of territory. His action was characteristic. He settled
Cossacks along the River Ussuri, a southern tributary of the Amur, and,
by pressing ceaselessly on the celestials (then distracted by a war with
England and France), he finally brought them to agree to the cession of