Thenceforth their course was easy.  Jermak and his small band of picked fighters were more than a match for the wretchedly armed and craven-spirited Tartars, who fled at the sound of firearms.  In 1581 the settlement, called Sibir, fell to the invaders; and, though they soon abandoned this rude encampment for a new foundation, the town of Tobolsk, yet the name Siberia recalls their pride at the conquest of the enemy’s capital.  The traditional skill of the Cossacks in the handling of boats greatly aided their advance, and despite the death of Jermak in battle, his men pressed on and conquered nearly the half of Siberia within a decade.  What Drake and the sea-dogs of Devon were then doing for England on the western main, was being accomplished for Russia by the ex-pirate and his band from the Volga.  The two expansive movements were destined finally to meet on the shores of the Pacific in the northern creeks of what is now British Columbia.

The later stages in Russian expansion need not detain us here.  The excellence of the Cossack methods in foraying, pioneer-work, and the forming of military settlements, consolidated the Muscovite conquests.  The Tartars were fain to submit to the Czar, or to flee to the nomad tribes of Central Asia or Northern China.  The invaders reached the River Lena in the year 1630; and some of their adventurers voyaged down the Amur, and breasted the waves of the Pacific in 1636.  Cossack bands conquered Kamchatka in 1699-1700[483].

[Footnote 483:  Vladimir, Russia en the Pacific.]

Meanwhile the first collision between the white and the yellow races took place on the River Amur, which the Chinese claimed as their own.  At first the Russians easily prevailed; but in the year 1689 they suffered a check.  New vigour was then manifested in the councils of Pekin, and the young Czar, Peter the Great, in his longing for triumphs over Swedes and Turks, thought lightly of gains at the expense of the “celestials.”  He therefore gave to Russian energies that trend westwards and southwards, which after him marked the reigns of Catharine II., Alexander I., and, in part, of Nicholas I. The surrender of the Amur valley to China in 1689 ended all efforts of Russia in that direction for a century and a half.  Many Russians believe that the earlier impulse was sounder and more fruitful in results for Russia than her meddling in the wars of the French Revolution and Empire.

Not till 1846 did Russia resume her march down the valley of the Amur; and then the new movement was partly due to British action.  At that time the hostility of Russia and Britain was becoming acute on Asiatic and Turkish questions.  Further, the first Anglo-Chinese War (1840-42) led to the cession of Hong-Kong to the distant islanders, who also had five Chinese ports opened to their trade.  This enabled Russia to pose as the protector of China, and to claim points of vantage whence her covering wings might be extended over that Empire.  The statesmen of Pekin had little belief in the genuineness of these offers, especially in view of the thorough exploration of the Amur region and the Gulf of Okhotsk which speedily ensued.