To the west as well as to the east of Siberia the Russian frontiers remained scarcely altered until about the middle of the present century. It was only in 1847 that the Tsar’s troops were able to cross the arid zone of the Kirghiz Steppes. The policy of Peter the Great was directed towards Europe, and his dream was to extend Russia towards the West by the conquest of Constantinople—a fact which accounts for the extinction of zeal on the part of Russia with respect to her Asiatic possessions, which were now treated merely as penal settlements or as fields for scientific investigation, whenever the Sovereigns took it into their heads to become specially interested in such matters. The increase of Imperial authority and the more regular organization of the State had in the meantime subdued the adventurous and enterprising spirit of the Cossacks, and that particular class of men, half soldiers, half brigands, who had proved themselves such hardy pioneers at an earlier epoch, now disappeared, and in the middle of the eighteenth century Siberia was opened as a field of colonization. In spite of the many obstacles which the system of serfdom in Russia placed in the way of peasant emigration, in 1851 the population of Siberia had reached 2,400,000, a figure which, although not very large considering the immensity of the country, was in excess of the population of Canada at the same period, which numbered only 1,800,000 souls. From this point of view the Russians had no reason to be ashamed of their colonization, and, as a matter of fact, have none to-day. According to the census of January, 1897, there were 5,731,732 Siberians living on a territory of 4,812,800 square miles, whereas in 1891 there were only 4,833,000 Canadians inhabiting the 3,721,800 square miles known as the Dominion. The density of the population of Northern Asia is not much inferior to that of British North America, and it must not be forgotten that the conditions of life in Siberia are greatly inferior to those of Canada. A comparison of the natural conditions existing in the northern regions of the old and the new world shows that they are nearly identical. Both consist for the most part of vast expanses of flat country, often covered with magnificent forests, and quite as frequently barren. Siberia, like Canada, is irrigated by noble rivers, which under a milder climate would constitute a superb network of intercommunication; but unfortunately both countries are hampered by an extremely rigorous climate, which imprisons these fine rivers during many months of the year under an impenetrably thick coating of ice. In the north of Siberia as well as of Canada the country is so intensely cold as to render agriculture impossible. That part, therefore, of both countries which is capable of exploitation is of extremely limited extent, consisting both in Russian Asia and in British North America of a ribbon-like zone some 3,720 miles in length and from 250 to 300 in width.