-hunters, faithful to then
customs, immediately spread themselves in order to hunt, purchase
furs, and above all to impose "jassak" upon the tribes living
thereabouts. But they were not satisfied with this. Already in 1636
the Cossack ELISEJ BUSA was sent out with an express commission to
explore the rivers beyond, falling into the Polar Sea, and to render
tributary the natives living on their banks. He was accompanied by
ten Cossacks, to whose company forty fur-hunters afterwards attached
themselves. In 1637 he came to the western mouth-arm of the Lena,
from which he went along the coast to the river Olenek, where he
passed the winter. Next year he returned by land to the Lena, and
built there two "kotsches,"[299] in which he descended the river to
the Polar Sea. After five days' successful rowing along the coast to
the eastward he discovered the mouth of the Yana. After three days'
march up the river he fell in with a Yakut tribe, from whom he got a
rich booty of sable and other furs. Here he passed the winter of
1638-39, here too he built himself a new craft, and again starting
for the Polar Sea, he came to another river falling into the eastern
mouth-arm of the Yana, where he found a Yukagir tribe, living in
earth huts, with whom he passed two years more, collecting tribute
from the tribes living in the neighbourhood.

At the same time IVANOV POSTNIK discovered by land the river
Indigirka. As usual, tribute was collected from the neighbouring
Yukagir tribes, yet not without fights, in which the natives at
first directed their weapons against the horses the Cossacks had
along with them, thinking that the horses were more dangerous than
the men. They had not seen horses before. A _simovie_ was
established, at which sixteen Cossacks were left behind. They built
boats, sailed down the river to the Polar Sea to collect tribute,
and discovered the river Alasej.

Some years after the river Kolyma appears to have been discovered,
and in 1644 the Cossack, MICHAILO STADUCHIN, founded on that river a
_simovie_, which afterwards increased to a small town, Nischni
Kolymsk. Here Staduchin got three pieces of information which
exerted considerable influence on later exploratory expeditions, for
he acquired knowledge of the Chukches, at that time a military race,
who possessed the part of North Asia which lay a little further to
the east. Further, the natives and the Russian hunters, who swarmed
in the region before Staduchin, i