Biographical Memoir of Peter Simon Pallas. 219 



true boundary of Europe and Asia ; while others attacked the 

 only remaining princedom of any consequence that existed in 

 these barbarous regions, and delivered up his states to their Czar. 

 As soon as the Russians had gained a footing on the Irtisch and 

 Oby, their inquiries after furs and mines drew them farther on ; 

 by degrees they imposed some tributes upon the wandering 

 tribes of those vast solitudes ; — and thus, in less than a century, 

 established that strange empire which, in its extreme limits, 

 touches America, Japan and China, and in which a few thou- 

 sands of soldiers are sufficient to guard 1500 leagues of coun- 

 try. 



But to enjoy in reality the possession of such a territory, it 

 was necessary to become properly acquainted with its nature and 

 resources, and, after having conquered it, it became expedient 

 to commence its real discovery. 



To the genius of Peter the Great this task also was reserved. 

 He was the first European monarch to whom the glory belongs 

 of having conceived those purely scientific expeditions, on a 

 great scale, in which men possessed of various kinds of know- 

 ledge, and aiding each other in their labours, examine a coun- 

 try in all its relations, expeditions of which antiquity presents 

 some examples, but which France and England carried to their 

 greatest perfection at the end of the last century, by limiting 

 their objects solely to that of enlightening Europe, and present- 

 ing to savage man some of the advantages of civilization. 



Hence, Messerchmidtof Dantzic traversed the whole of Sibe- 

 ria, between the years 1720 and 1725; and brought back an 

 immense collection of observations ; but the death of the Czar 

 proved fatal to his prospects, his labours were neglected, and he 

 died in misery. In 1738, the Empress Anne Iwanowna, niece 

 of Peter the Great, who displayed on the throne a charactefT^- 

 very different from that which those who caused her to mount 

 it imagined her to possess, resumed the projects of her uncle. 



A more numerous commission, which lasted ten years, procu- 

 red for natural history the excellent memoirs of Steller, and 

 those of John George Gmelin, the head of a more numerous fa- 

 mily, and not less celebrated in that science than the BernouUis 

 were in mathematics. 



The troubles which followed the death of Anne, and the ne^ 



