HISTORICAL SKETCH. i) 



the bauks of the Irlysli. In Moscow, meanwhile, nothing was known of the destruction of 

 Yermak, and in 1586 ariived on the Tiira a fresh reinforcement of 300 men under their 

 leaders Sukin, Miasnov and Chulkov, who founded upon this river the town of Tinmen and 

 thence began to spread the Russian authority over the Siberian natives. In 1587 yet anotlier 

 500 troops were sent from Moscow into Siberia, and the order was given to build the 11 us- 

 sian town of Tobolsk in the place of the ruined capital of Kuchum. 



As soon as the Siberian kingdom was united to the Russian possessions the Govern- 

 ment began to concern itself about the strengthening of the bond between the new possessions 

 and the old. It could not have the extensive countries, seized by the Russians, deserted, and 

 was compelled to move forth certain portions of its own population to create points of 

 resistance, or so to say, cadres of the future natural colonization. Such points of resistance, 

 founded beyond the Urals in the sixteenth century, were besides Tiumen and Tobolsk, Yerkho- 

 turie, Pelym, Beriozov, Surgut, Obdorsk, Narym, Ketsk and Tara. All these little towns 

 served only as centres from which the conquerors were able to exploit the Siberian natives 

 by means of collecting from them y a s s a k and trading with them in furs. In the seventeenth 

 century the construction of rallying points continues, and Russian dominion rapidly extends 

 further and farther to the east. From the year 1604 the following strongholds were gradually 

 built, out of which subsequently grew the towns of Tomsk, Turukhausk, Kuznetsk, Yeni- 

 seisk, Kansk, Krasnoyarsk, Yakutsk, Olekminsk, Achinsk, Barguzinsk, Irkutsk, Balagansk, 

 Kerchinsk, Kireusk, and thus the Russian power was quickly extended over the basins of the 

 three giant rivers of Siberia, the Obi, Yenissei and Lena. Between 1630 and 1640 Russian 

 Cossack parties reached, on the one hand, the Arctic Ocean, and on the other, to the Sea of 

 Okhotsk, and to this period belong their first attempts at sea voyages. In 1636 the Cossack 

 Yellissei Buza was sent from Yeuisseisk with the positive instruction to put to sea, and folli)W- 

 ing along the coasts of the Arctic Ocean, to impose y a s s a k upon its inhabitants. Only in 

 1637 did Buza succeed in descending the Lena, coming out by its western arm upon the coast 

 of the Arctic Ocean, and in making his way along it to the mouth of the Oleuek. In the 

 following year however, 1638, having built himself two vessels, called «Kocha», Buza sailed 

 into the ocean by the eastern arm of the Lena and succeeded in reaching the mouth of the 

 Yana. Almost at the same time Ivan Postnik reached the Yana and the more distant Inidi- 

 ghirka by land. In 1644 the Cossack Mikhail Stodukhin discovered the most eastern of the 

 great rivers falling into the Arctic Ocean, the Kolyma, and there founded a winter station, 

 subsequently transformed into Nizhui-Kolpusk, 



From the extreme point of resistance at that time id' the Russian dominion in the east, 

 Kolymsk, a complete expedition was equipped in the year 1647 under the command of the 

 Kholmogorsk emigrant, Fedot Alexeev and the Cossack Semion Dezhniev. In 1647 the expe- 

 dition consisted of only four vessels; it reached the Chukotsk coast but did not succeed in 

 penetrating further. On the other hand in the following year, 1648, an expedition of seven 

 vessels with more than ten men on each vessel, under the leadership of Semion Dezhniev, 

 Fedot Alexeev and Gerassim Ankundinov, was more fortunate. Quitting the Kolyma on the 

 30th of June, the intrepid sailors found the sea free from ice, and without meeting 

 with any particular obstacles weathered the cape, called in recent times by Xordeuskjold 



