Through all these years, despite the fact that anarchy and chaos rioted over Muscovy, despite the fact that no troops came to aid in the advance, the Cossacks still pressed their way, contested by the scattered bands of Tatars, and farther on by the Buriats, the Yakuts, the Koriats. After these fighters and conquerors came the traders and colonists, with their families, following along the road that had been won. The valleys of the great Siberian rivers, which so short a time before had been the grazing-grounds of the Tatars, became dotted now with the farms of the new-come settlers. The advance guards of the fur-traders, with blockhouses guarding the portages, and clustering wooden huts and churches, pushed south and east as far as Kuznetz, at the head of navigation on the River Tom, and to the foot of the Altai Mountains. North and east the trade-route was advanced to the Yenesei, twenty-two hundred miles inland. As many as sixty-eight hundred sables went back to Russia in 1640, together with great quantities of fox, ermine, and squirrel-skins. The quaint volumes of “Purchas his Pilgrimes,” published in 1625, tell of some of the early explorations. A band of Cossacks dared the upper Yenesei, which “hath high mountains to the east, among which are some that cast out fire and brimstone.” They made friends of the cave-dwelling Tunguses in this region, who were themselves stirred to explore, and went on far eastward to another river, less than the Yenesei but as rapid. By faster running the Tunguses caught some of the inhabitants, who pointed across the river and said “Om! Om!” The old chronicler diligently records the speculation as to what “Om! Om!” could mean. Some thought that it signified thunder, others held it a warning that the great beyond teemed with devils. These unfortunate slow-running natives died, “probably of fright,” when the Tunguses, in a spirit as naïvely unfeeling as if they were collecting curios, were taking them back to be exhibited to their friends the Cossacks. How far these Tunguses had pierced cannot be told. In one of the dialects of the Yakuts who live beyond Baikal, “ta-oom” or “tanak-hoom” means “greetings.” Had the Tunguses and the Cossacks who followed them arrived at the Yakuts’ country? Or was the river on which passed “ships with sails” and beyond which was heard the booming of brazen bells the Amur? Were those the junks and temple-gongs of the Manchus? _Ni snaia_,--who knows?