kingdom for himself.  In 1579 he was successful in overcoming the Tartars and their chief town Sibir, near Tobolsk; but, finding it difficult to retain his position, determined to return to his allegiance to the Czar on condition of being supported.  This was readily granted, and from that time onward the Russians steadily pushed on through to the unknown country of the north of Asia, since named after the little town conquered by Yermak, of which scarcely any traces now remain.  As early as 1639 they had reached the Pacific under Kupilof.  A force was sent out from Yakutz, on the Lena, in 1643, which reached the Amur, and thus Russians came for the first time in contact with the Chinese, and a new method of reaching Cathay was thus obtained, while geography gained the knowledge of the extent of Northern Asia.  For, about the same time (in 1648), the Arctic Ocean was reached on the north shores of Siberia, and a fleet under the Cossack Dishinef sailed from Kolyma and reached as far as the straits known by the name of Behring.  It was not, however, till fifty years afterwards, in 1696, that the Russians reached Kamtschatka.

Notwithstanding the access of knowledge which had been gained by these successive bold pushes towards north and east, it still remained uncertain whether Siberia did not join on to the northern part of the New World discovered by Columbus and Amerigo, and in 1728 Peter the Great sent out an expedition under VITUS BEHRING, a Dane in the Russian service, with the express aim of ascertaining this point.  He reached Kamtschatka, and there built two vessels as directed by the Czar, and started on his voyage northward, coasting along the land.  When he reached a little beyond 67 deg.  N., he found no land to the north or east, and conceived he had reached the end of the continent.  As a matter of fact, he was within thirty miles of the west coast of America; but of this he does not seem to have been aware, being content with solving the special problem put before him by the Czar.  The strait thus discovered by Behring, though not known by him to be a strait, has ever since been known by his name.  In 1741, however, Behring again set out on a voyage of discovery to ascertain how far to the east America was, and within a fortnight had come within sight of the lofty mountain named by him Mount St. Elias.  Behring himself died upon this voyage, on an island also named after him; he had at last solved the relation between the Old and the New Worlds.

These voyages of Behring, however, belong to a much later stage of discovery than those we have hitherto been treating for the last three chapters.  His explorations were undertaken mainly for scientific purposes, and to solve a scientific problem, whereas all the other researches of Spanish, Portuguese, English, and Dutch were directed to one end, that of reaching the Spice Islands and Cathay.  The Portuguese at first started out on the search by the slow method of creeping down the coast of Africa; the Spanish,