ganoffs tremble. Nevertheless, a brilliant, unexpected success
justified their enterprise and changed into favor the wrath of their
sovereign.

In beginning the story of the exploits of Iermak we shall at first say
that, like everything that is extraordinary, they have made a strong
impression upon the imagination of the vulgar, and have given birth to
many fables, which are confused in the traditions with the real facts.
Under the title of "annals" they have led the historians themselves into
error. It is thus, for instance, that some hundreds of warriors, led by
Iermak, have been metamorphosed into an army, and, like the soldiers of
Cortes or Pizarro, have been counted as thousands. The months became
years. A somewhat difficult navigation appeared marvellous. Leaving at
one side the fabulous assertions we shall, for the principal facts, base
our statements upon official documents and on the most truthful
contemporaneous account of a conquest which was, indeed, of a most
surprising character.

In the first place, the Cossacks ascended, for four days, the course of
the Tchusovaya, rapid and sown with rocks, as far as the chain of the
Ural Mountains. The two following days, in the shadow of the masses of
stone with which the interior of these mountains is covered, they
reached, by means of the river Serebrennaia, the passage called the
"Route of Siberia." There they stopped, and, ignorant of what might next
happen to them, they constructed for their safety a kind of redoubt to
which they gave the name of _kokui_. They had so far found only deserts
and a small number of inhabitants. Then they moved, towing their small
crafts as far as the river of Iaravle. These places are, even to this
day, marked by the monuments of Iermak; rocks, caverns, remains of
fortifications, bear his name. It is asserted that the big boats
abandoned by him between the Serebrennaia and the Barantcha are not, in
our time, entirely decayed, and that lofty trees shade their ruins, half
reduced to dust. By the Iaravle and the Taghil the Cossacks, reaching
the Tura, which waters one of the provinces of the empire of Siberia,
for the first time drew the sword of conquerors. At the place where the
city of Turinsk now stands there then existed a little town, the domain
of the prince Yepantcha. He commanded a large number of Tartars and
Vogulitches, and received these audacious strangers with a hail of
arrows, shot from the banks of the river, at the pla