133 RUSSIAN EMPIRE IN ASIA. 



on the throne, Ivan Vassilievitch II, to whom he disclosed the nature 

 of his connexions, promised him protection, and in 1558, assumed the 

 title of" lord of Sibir or Siberia. Soon after, Yermac, a chief of the 

 Don Cossacs, being compelled by the progress of the Russian con- 

 quests to submit, or seek some distant place of refuge, retired with a 

 number of his followers into Siberia, where, having defeated the Tar- 

 tar khan of Sibir, he seized his capital, and made it his residence ; but 

 finding himself too weak to preserve his conquests, he applied tc 

 Russia for succours and protection, and sent a deputation to do 

 homage to the czar as his sovereign. In the course of two or three 

 years after, almost all the Cossacs were killed in repeated battles, 

 and Yermac himself was drowned in attempting to leap into a boat 

 The Russians, however, after many conflicts, secured to themselves 

 the possession of this extensive country ; and by the middle of the 

 seventeeth century had advanced to the river Amur, where they 

 built some forts, which occasioned hostilities between them and the 

 Chinese, who destroyed the Russian forts. These disputes were 

 terminated by the treaty of Nershinsk, concluded in 1689, by which 

 the Argoon was made the boundary of the Russian and Chinese 

 territories. The limits of the former were somewhat enlarged in 

 1727. Kamtschatka was reduced under the power of the Russians 

 about the year 1711. 



