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In another establishment there were little busts of the Emperor and other high personages in Russia, cut in crystal and topaz. I saw a fine bust of Yermak, and another of the elder Demidoff, both in topaz. A crystal bust of Louis Napoleon was exhibited, and its owner told me it would be sent to the Exposition Universelle.
Soon after the arrival of the additional troops, Yermak audaciously started out to make further conquests. One dark and rainy night he encamped with his force on a small island in the Irtish River. Relying on the terror which his name had inspired, and the stormy weather, he deemed it unnecessary to post sentinels. Wearied with their long march, soon all of the Russians were buried in slumber.
The beautiful and mighty "Yermak," Gordyeeff's steam tow-boat, was rapidly floating down the current, and on each side the shores of the powerful and beautiful Volga were slowly moving past him the left side, all bathed in sunshine, stretching itself to the very end of the sky like a pompous carpet of verdure; the right shore, its high banks overgrown with woods, swung skyward, sinking in stern repose.
The band was composed of adventurers, freebooters, and criminals, and the expedition was armed and provisioned by Strogonoff, who expected to profit by opening up the new region. Permission having been obtained from the government, in 1579 Yermak set forth with his followers for the unknown country.
Left to themselves, Egbert and Lady Anne would unfailingly have called him Fluff, but they were not obstinate. Egbert poured himself out some tea. As the silence gave no sign of breaking on Lady Anne's initiative, he braced himself for another Yermak effort. "My remark at lunch had a purely academic application," he announced; "you seem to put an unnecessarily personal significance into it."
Among his followers was one Yermak, a chief of the Cossacks of the Don, whom the czar sentenced to death for his love of plunder, but afterwards pardoned. Yermak and his followers soon found the rule of Moscow too stringent for their ideas of personal liberty, and he led a Cossack band to the Stroganof settlements in Perm.
Even still the conquering Yermak is often regarded as a sort of explorer of the lands beyond the Urals. But he merely establishes himself as a master where the Strogonov traders had been received as guests. Maps of the Ob and of the Ostiak country had already been published by Sebastian Munster and by Herberstein a generation before the Cossacks entered Sibir.
The very name of this town is marked on Munster's map. In 1579, Yermak began the second plundering expedition, which in two years resulted in the capture of the Tatar kingdom. When the conquerors entered Sibir they had been reduced from over 800 to about 400 men. But this handful represented the power of the Tsars and Yermak could sue for pardon, with the offer of a kingdom as his ransom.
Years afterward a suitable monument was erected to Yermak in the city of Tobolsk, which was built on the battle-field where he gained his first decisive victory over the Tartar ruler. His real monument is all Siberia, whose conquest he inaugurated. In 1847 the Amur River section was annexed by Russia regardless of the protests of the Chinese Government.
When Yermak saw the annihilation of his troops, he cut his way through the Tartars and attempted to swim the stream, but was dragged to the bottom by his heavy armor and drowned. When news of the crushing disaster reached Sibir the Russians, losing heart at the death of their leader, evacuated the place and returned home.
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