XIII.] 
RUSSIAN CONQUEST OF SIBERIA, 
159 
the necessary sustenance, but supported in every way the bold 
adventurer’s plan of entering on a campaign for the conquest of 
Siberia. This was begun in 1579. In 1580 Yermak passed the 
Ural, and after several engagements marched in particular 
against the Tartars living in Western Siberia, along the rivers 
Tagil and Tura to Tjumen, and thence in 1581 farther along 
the Tobol and Irtisch to Kutschum Khan’s residence Sibir, 
situated in the neighbourhood of the present Tobolsk. It was 
this fortress, long since destroyed, which gave its name to the 
whole north part of Asia. 
From this point the Russians, mainly following the great 
rivers, and passing from one river territory to another at the 
places where the tributaries almost met, spread out rapidly in 
all directions. Yermak himself indeed was drowned on the ^^th 
o 
August, 1584, in the river Irtisch, but the adventurers who 
accompanied him overran in a few decades the whole of the 
enormous territory lying north of the deserts of Central Asia 
from Ural to the Pacific, everywhere strengthening their 
dominion by building Ostrogs, or small fortresses, at suitable 
places. It was the noble fur-yielding animals of the extensive 
forests of Siberia which played the same part with the Russian 
promyschleni, as gold with the Spanish adventurers in South 
America. 
At the close of the sixteenth century the Cossacks had 
already possessed themselves of the greater part of the river 
territory of the Irtisch-Ob, and sable-hunters had already gone 
as far north-east^ as the river Tas, where the sable-hunting 
1 It is a peculiar circumstance that the vanguard of the Russian stream 
of emigration which spread over Siberia, advanced along the northernmost 
part of the country by the Tas, Turuchansk, Yakutsk, Kolyma, and Ana- 
dyrsk. This depended in the first place upon the races living there 
having less power of resistance against the invaders, who were often very 
few in number, than the tribes in the south, but also on the fact that the most 
precious and most transportable treasures of Siberia—sable, beaver, and fox- 
skins—were obtained in greatest quantity from these northern regions. 
