of the northern extremity of Europe, which has been already quoted,
is to be found, was published only a few years before the first
north-east voyages of the English and the Dutch, of which I have
before given a detailed account. Through these the northernmost part
of European Russia and the westernmost part of the Asiatic Polar Sea
were mapped, but an actual knowledge of the north coast of Asia in
its entirety was obtained through the conquest of Siberia by the
Russians. It is impossible here to give an account of the campaigns,
by which the whole of this enormous territory was brought under the
sceptre of the Czar of Moscow, or of the private journeys for sport,
trade, and the collecting of tribute, by which this conquest was
facilitated. But as nearly every step which the Russian invaders
took forward, also extended the knowledge of regions previously
quite unknown, I shall mention the years in which during this
conquest the most important occurrences in a geographical point of
view took place, and give a later more detailed account of the
exploratory or military expeditions which led directly to important
results affecting the extension of our knowledge of the geography of
the region now in question.

The way was prepared for the conquest of Siberia through peaceful
commercial treaties[297] which a rich Russian peasant ANIKA, ancestor
of the STROGANOV family, entered into with the wild races settled in
Western Siberia, whom he even partially induced to pay a yearly
tribute to the Czar of Moscow. In connection with this he and his
sons, in the middle of the sixteenth century, obtained large grants
of land on the rivers Kama and Chusovaja and their tributaries, with
the right to build towns and forts there, whereby their riches,
previously very considerable, were much increased. The family's
extensive possessions, however, were threatened in 1577 by a great
danger, when a host of Cossack freebooters, six to seven thousand
strong, under the leadership of YERMAK TIMOFEJEV, took flight to the
country round Chusovaja in order to avoid the troops which the Czar
sent to subdue them and punish them for all the depredations they
had committed on the Don, the Caspian Sea and the Volga. In order to
get rid of the freebooters, MAXIM STROGANOV, Anika's grandson, not
only provided Yermak and his men with the necessary sustenance, but
supported in every way the bold adventurer's plan of entering on a
campaign for the conquest of S