Note 643 — Chapter XI · —The Anthropo-Geography Of Rivers

Rivers have played the same part in expediting Russian expansion across the wide extent of Siberia. Here again a severe climate necessitated reliance on furs, the chief natural product of the country, as the basis of trade. These, as the outcome of savage economy, were gathered in from wide areas which only rivers could open up. Therefore, where the Siberian streams flatten out their upper courses east and west against the northern face of the Asiatic plateau, with low watersheds between, the Russian explorer and sable hunter struck their eastward water trail toward the Pacific. The advance, which under Yermak crossed the Ural Mountains in 1579, reached the Yenisei River in 1610 and planted there the town of Turuchansk as a sort of milestone, almost on the Arctic Circle opposite the mouth of the Lower Tunguska, a long eastern tributary. Up this they passed to the Lena in 1627, thence to Bering Sea by the Kolima and Anadyr rivers, because these arctic fields yielded sable, beaver and fox skins in greatest quantity.643 The Lena especially, from its source down to its eastern elbow at Yakutsk, that great rendezvous of Siberian fur traders, was a highway for trapper and Cossack tribute-gatherer.644 From the sources of the Yenisei in Lake Baikal to the navigable course of the Amur was a short step, taken in 1658, though the control of the river, which was claimed by China, was not secured till two hundred years later.645 [See map page 103.]