attempted its subjugation.  The Dnieper, navigable for boats most of the distance from Kief to the Euxine, favored their enterprise.  They launched upon the stream two hundred barges, which they filled with their choicest troops.  Rapidly they floated down the stream, spread their sails upon the bosom of the Euxine, entered the Bosporus, and anchoring their fleet at the mouth of the Golden Horn, laid siege to the city.  The Emperor Michael III. then reigned at Constantinople.  This Northmen invasion was entirely unexpected, and the emperor was absent, engaged in war with the Arabs.  A courier was immediately dispatched to inform him of the peril of the city.  He hastily returned to his capital which he finally reached, after eluding, with much difficulty, the vigilance of the besiegers.  Just as the inhabitants of the city were yielding to despair, there arose a tempest, which swept the Bosporus with resistless fury.  The crowded barges were dashed against each other, shattered, wrecked and sunk.  The Christians of Constantinople justly attributed their salvation to the interposition of God.  Ascolod and Dir, with the wrecks of their army, returned in chagrin to Kief.

The historians of that period relate that the idolatrous Russians were so terrified by this display of the divine displeasure that they immediately sent embassadors to Constantinople, professing their readiness to embrace Christianity, and asking that they might receive the rite of baptism.  In attestation of the fact that Christianity at this period entered Russia, we are referred to a well authenticated letter, of the patriarch Photius, written at the close of the year 866.

“The Russians,” he says, “so celebrated for their cruelty, conquerors of their neighbors, and who, in their pride, dared to attack the Roman empire, have already renounced their superstitions, and have embraced the religion of Jesus Christ.  Lately our most formidable enemies, they have now become our most faithful friends.  We have recently sent them a bishop and a priest, and they testify the greatest zeal for Christianity.”

It was in this way, it seems, that the religion of our Saviour first entered barbaric Russia.  The gospel, thus welcomed, soon became firmly established at Kief, and rapidly extended its conquests in all directions.  The two Russian kingdoms, that of Rurik in the north, and that of Ascolod and Dir on the Dnieper, rapidly extended as these enterprising kings, by arms, subjected adjacent nations to their sway.  Rurik remained upon the throne fifteen years, and then died, surrendering his crown to his son Igor, still a child.  A relative, Oleg, was intrusted with the regency, during the minority of the boy king.  Such was the state of Russia in the year 879.