8 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



could retreated, " trekked," northward into the region of the Volga and 

 the Oka. There, in central Eussia, this enforced colonization or 

 "trekking" resulted in the development of the Great Russian stock, 

 which to-day occupies the heart of Eussia and constitutes two thirds of 

 the Eussian race. Sheltered in the almost impassable forests of central 

 Eussia, the Eussian retained his nationality, and slowly recovering his 

 strength, not only threw off the Tartar yoke but also freed his kinsmen 

 on the Dnieper. In the subsequent centuries he fought his way to 

 the sea. 



The story of the rise of Moscow as the center from which the new 

 Eussia slowly expanded till it occupied the great plain of eastern 

 Europe and northern Asia is well known. Midway between the Eussian 

 on the Volga and the Eussian on the Dnieper rose Moscow, at the meet- 

 ing place of the three great roads of the region. Its beginning must 

 have been very humble for a rhymning tale of a little later period mar- 

 vels much at its rise. 



What man ever thought or divined that Moscow could be accounted an 

 Empire? Once by the river Moskva there stood only the goodly hamlets of the 

 boyar, of the worthy Stephen Kutchak the son of Ivan. 



Under Ivan the Terrible in the sixteenth century, the mighty Volga, 

 "Mother Volga," was conquered and its cities Kazan and Astrakhan 

 brought under Muscovite rule. Then towards the end of the sixteenth 

 century, the conquest of the land to the east was begun. On New 

 Year's Day of 1581, Yermak, the trapper and giant pirate of the Volga, 

 having been entrusted with a commission by the Tsar, set out to subdue 

 the tribes of Sibir, whence the name Siberia, and the lands of the rich 

 fur trade. A century later the Pacific was reached and northern Asia 

 was added to the Tsar's dominions during the very period that marks 

 the great colonial expansion of France and England. 



With the accession of Peter the Great, an era of conquest began 

 which gave the Eussian his opportunity to expand over the plain west- 

 ward. Geographically, as we have seen, it formed a part of the Musco- 

 vite territory but hostile races were in possession. During the reign of 

 Peter the Great and later Catherine II., we see the conflict of the rival 

 races for control of all the western provinces of present-day Eussia. 

 The victory was with the stronger ethnic group, Peter the Great got 

 the Baltic provinces, pushing the frontier to its natural line, the sea, 

 and in the founding of Petersburg placed "a window," as he put it, 

 for Eussia to look out upon Europe; a century later Catherine got a 

 large portion of Poland, adding "the doormat" also. This completed 

 the Eussian advance into Europe in this direction save for the acquisi- 

 tion of Finland in 1809 and a further portion of Polish land including 

 the city of Warsaw in 1815. 



But the difiiculties in the way of expansion to the geographic fron- 



