The Slav republics suffered at the hands of Asiatics on the south, and from the depredations of vikings on the north; moreover there were internal dissensions. In A.D. 864, Rurik, a Varoeger prince--the same who, it is believed, laid waste the maritime provinces of France in 850 and in 851 entered the Thames with 300 sail and pillaged Canterbury--made himself master of the northern republic, took up his residence at Novgorod and founded a dynasty which lasted 700 years. There is a legend to the effect that his coming was at the invitation of the Slavs, who sought his aid and sovereignty, but there can be no doubt it was as a conqueror that Rurik came and established his race in Russia. Some of his followers, led by Askold and Dyr, sought fortune and conquest further south. These became masters of Kief, pressed on to Constantinople in 200 ships, embraced Christianity and returned to Kief, intending there to found a separate kingdom and dynasty. After the death of Rurik, his son Igor, a minor, succeeded; his uncle, Oleg, as regent, went to Kief; there he treacherously killed the two usurping leaders, took possession of the city and, appointing Igor to the throne, determined that Kief should be the "mother of Russian towns." The people were then pagans, and the Northmen kept to the practices of their ancestors until about 955, when Olga was regent; she visited Constantinople and was there baptised into the Christian faith. Some thirty years later, Vladimir, the seventh in descent from Rurik, ascended the throne, and during his reign the Christian religion was generally adopted throughout his realm. Kief then became closely associated with Constantinople, its connection with the Byzantine empire being both ecclesiastical and commercial. Novgorod, on the other hand, remained in closer touch with the west, supplying the Northmen with the wares of Araby and Ind that reached Russia by way of the Volga. Otther, the Scandinavian founder of Tver, where the Tmak joins the Volga north of Moscow, was a great trader and traveller; at one time going as far east as Perm on the Kama (Biarmaland), at another to England--where he gave King Alfred particulars of the fairs in the east, and the methods of trading with Asian merchants. In the Historical Museum of Moscow is a well arranged collection of prehistoric antiquities found in the empire. There is nothing among the stone implements to show that the earliest races in Russia in any way differed in habit from those of the same era occupying western Europe and the British Isles. The most ancient of the relics (Rooms I., II.) were found with bones of the mammoth in the district of Murom in Vladimir, and at Kostenki near Voronesh. Some ear-rings and a bracelet of twisted silver were found in the Kremlin, and a few other early remains when excavating for the foundations of the new cathedral, but these trifles are not evidence of early occupation, since they may have been left by travellers along the waterways.