Early in the spring of 1554 a numerous and choice army descended the Volga in bateaux to the delta on which Astrachan is built. The low lands, intersected by the branching stream, is composed of innumerable islands. The inhabitants of the city, abandoning the capital entirely, took refuge among these islands, where they enjoyed great advantages in repelling assailants. The Russians took possession of the city, prosecuted the war vigorously through the summer, and the tzar, on the 20th of October, which was his birthday, received the gratifying intelligence that every foe was quelled, and that the Russian government was firmly established on the shores of the Caspian. Well might Russia now be proud of its territorial greatness. The opening of these new realms encouraged commerce, promoted wealth, and developed to an extraordinary degree the resources of the empire. England was, at that time, far beyond the bounds of the political horizon of Russia. In fact, the Russians hardly knew that there was such a nation. Great Britain was not, at that time, a maritime power of the first order. Spain, Portugal, Venice and Genoa were then the great monarchs of the ocean. England was just beginning to become the dangerous rival of those States whom she has already so infinitely surpassed in maritime greatness. She had then formed the project of opening a shorter route to the Indies through the North Sea, and, in 1553, during the reign of Edward VI., had dispatched an expedition of three vessels, under Hugh Willoughby, in search of a north-east passage. These vessels, separated by a tempest, were unable to reunite, and two of them were wrecked upon the icy coast of Russian Lapland in the extreme latitude of eighty degrees north. Willoughby and his companions perished. Some Lapland fishermen found their remains in the winter of the year 1554. Willoughby was seated in a cabin constructed upon the shore with his journal before him, with which he appeared to have been occupied until the moment of his death. The other ship, commanded by Captain Chanceller, was more fortunate. He penetrated the White Sea, and, on the 24th of August, landed in the Bay of Dwina at the Russian monastery of St. Nicholas, where now stands the city of Archangel. The English informed the inhabitants, who were astonished at the apparition of such a ship in their waters, that they were bearers of a letter to the tzar from the King of England, who desired to establish commercial relations with the great and hitherto almost unknown northern empire. The commandant of the country furnished the mariners with provisions, and immediately dispatched a courier to Ivan at Moscow, which was some six hundred miles south of the Bay of Dwina.