Note 1 — Chapter XXVII · THE SIBERIAN FRONTIER AT KIAKHTA.

In 1655 a Russian embassy was sent to Peking, with a view to the arrangement of a commercial treaty. The route then lay from Tobolsk up the Irtish to its source, over the Altai mountains, through the vast domain of the Kalmuks, and across the Mongolian steppes. The Russian envoy, however, refused to lie down and submit to Chinese etiquette in approaching the Emperor, and was sent away, partly, perhaps, for his want of obsequiousness, and more, perhaps, because the Chinese did not see the need of a treaty, the boundaries of the two empires being then not so perfectly in contact as now. A second embassy, sent in 1675, proved also a failure; but after this there happened a series of events which caused the Chinese to realize that the Russians were nearer neighbours than they had been accustomed to regard them. This was brought about by the advances of the Siberians in the region of the Amur, where they had taken up their abode among the Daurians and other tribes, whom they so far encroached upon as to cause the Daurians to appeal for aid to the Chinese. This aid was given, and thus the Chinese and the Russians came first to blows in 1684.