of the world to regions so remote, and events so dramatic in their intensity and momentous in their results, as that which has come about in Manchuria.  The Far Eastern Question is the outcome of the expansion of two vigorous races, that of Russia and Japan, at the expense of the almost torpid polity of China.  The struggle has taken place in the debatable lands north and west of Korea, where Tartars and Chinese formerly warred for supremacy, and where geographical and commercial considerations enhance the value of the most northerly of the ice-free ports of the Continent of Asia.

In order to understand the significance of this great struggle, we must look back to the earlier stages of the extension of Russian influence.  Up to a very recent period the eastern growth of Russia affords an instance of swift and natural expansion.  Picture on the one side a young and vigorous community, dowered with patriotic pride by the long and eventually triumphant conflict with the Tartar hordes, and dwelling in dreary plains where Nature now and again drives men forth on the quest for a sufficiency of food.  On the other hand, behold a vast territory, well-watered, with no natural barrier between the Urals and the Pacific, sparsely inhabited by tribes of nomads having little in common.  The one active community will absorb the ill-organised units as inevitably as the rising tide overflows the neighbouring mud-flats when once the intervening barrier is overtopped.  In the case of Russia and Siberia the only barrier is that of the Ural Mountains; and their gradual slopes form a slighter barrier than is anywhere else figured on the map of the world in so conspicuous a chain.  The Urals once crossed, the slopes and waterways invite the traveller eastwards.

The French revolutionists of 1793 used to say, “With bread and iron one can get to China.”  Russian pioneers had made good that boast nearly two centuries before it was uttered in Paris.  The impelling force which set in motion the Muscovite tide originated with a man whose name is rarely heard outside Russia.  Yet, if the fame of men were proportionate to the effect of their exploits, few names would be more widely known than that of Jermak.  This man had been a hauler of boats up the banks of the Volga, until his strength, hardihood, and love of adventure impelled him to a freebooting life, wherein his powers of command and the fierce thoroughness of his methods speedily earned him the name of Jermak, “the millstone.”  In the year 1580, the wealthy family of the Stroganoffs, tempted by stories of the wealth to be gained from the fur-bearing animals of Siberia, turned their thoughts to Jermak and his robber band as the readiest tools for the conquest of those plains.  The enterprise appealed to Jermak and the hardy Cossacks with whom he had to do.  He and his men were no less skilled in river craft than in fighting; and the roving Cossack spirit kindled at the thought of new lands to harry.  Proceeding by boat from Perm, they worked their way into the spurs of the Urals, and then by no very long portage crossed one of its lower passes and found themselves on one of the tributaries of the Obi.