CONQUEST OF SIBERIA BY THE RUSSIANS. 



191 



CHAPTER XVI. 



CONQUEST OF SIBERIA BY THE RUSSIANS-THEIR VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY ALONG 

 THE SHORES OF THE POLAR SEA. 



Ivan the Terrible.— Strogonoff.—Yermak, the Robber and Conqueror.— His Expeditions to Siberia.— 

 Battle of Tobolsk.— Yermak's Death. — Progress of the Russians to Ochotsk.— Semen Deshnew. — 

 Condition of the Siberian Natives under the Russian Yoke. — Voyages of Discovery in the Reign of 

 the Empress Anna. — Prontschischtschew. — Chariton and Demetrius Laptew. — An Arctic Heroine. 

 — Schalaurow. — Discoveries in the Sea of Bering and in the Pacific Ocean. — The Liichow Islands. — 

 Fossil Ivory.— New Siberia.— The wooden Mountains.— The past Ages of Siberia. 



IN the beginning of tlie thirteenth century, the now huge Empire of Russia 

 was confined to part of her present European possessions, and divided into 

 several independent principalities, the scene of disunion and almost perpetual 

 warfare. Thus when the country was invaded, in 1236, by the Tartars, under 

 Baaty Khan, a grandson of the famous Gengis Khan, it fell an easy prey to its 

 conquerors. The miseries of a foreign yoke, aggravated by intestine discord, 

 lasted about 250 years, until Ivan Wasiljewitsch I. (1462-1505) became the 

 deliverer of his country, and laid the foundations of her future greatness. This 

 able prince subdued, in 1470, the Great Novgorod, a city until then so powerful 

 as to have maintained its independence, both against the Russian grand princes 

 and the Tartar khans ; and, ten years Jater, he not only threw ofE the yoke of the 

 Khans of Khipsack, but destroyed their empire. The conquest of Constanti- 

 nople by the Turks placed the spiritual diadem of the ancient Cresars on his 



