The Apotheosis: Here the sober thread of probability in the narrative of Yermak becomes almost lost in the bright legends which the bylines have woven about the hero's end.
"The Tartars, recognizing the body of the chieftain by the great golden eagle emblazoned on his armor, hung the corpse upon a framework of poles, and for six weeks made it a target for their archers. Yet even the carrion birds of prey, wheeling in the dark clouds about the hero's head, respected the august remains — a terrifying and prodigious proof to the Mussulmen that the dead leader was of no common clay I At night a cloud of baleful fire flickered about his head...," and this although no odor of putrefaction arose from the body!" The Tartars, persuaded by these omens, decided to bury the remains of Yermak with all the ceremony due to one of their own heroes. His grave, for many generations, became the resort of the Tartar magicians and of the shamans or
"Medicine-men" who were most honoured among the Voguls and Ostiaks.... " Thus bereft in turn of their three leaders, the Cossack expedition returned in disorder to the Russian outposts. For a time the conquests that Yermak had made with so much courage and persistence were abandoned. But his discoveries and example had not been in vain. The legend of the Cossack hero — an epic of empire — remained to stir the Cossack spirit to new adventures. It was largely through Cossack exploration and settlement that the vast land of Siberia was made known to Europe during the two succeeding centuries.
In a recent work by Prof. Golder, the eminent American authority on the history of Alaska, the story of the discovery of and explorations in Eastern Siberia and the Western coast of America by Yermak's successors is told in fascinating detail.
Upon his deathbed Peter the Great continually asked for news of a Cossack expedition which, under his orders, had been sent out to solve the mystery of a greatly desired "possible isthmus" which he thought must join the continents of Asia and the Americas. An extract from the directions personally addressed by the Tsar to the leaders of this quest shows what degree of pioneering work was expected, even in 1719, of Cossack enterprise.
"You are to proceed to Kamchatka, as you have been ordered, and determine whether Asia and
America are united, cmd go not only North and South, but East and West, putting in a chart all that you see." (See Golder's "Russian Expansion in the Pacific," p. 114, etc.)
If the tossing waters of Behring Strait had not stopped the long ride of the Cossack pioneers, the western coast of North America might have been added to the Tsar's empire before Anglo- Saxon explorers could have gained a foothold there. A Cossack captain was the first white man to set foot upon the coast of Alaska — thus linking the history of our great Eastern neighbor Siberia with our own. And, while Cossack troopers were fighting to hold a great continent for Civilization— as against Bolshevik "frightfulness" and misrule — in the Siberian capital at Omsk the reputed saints-day of Yermak the Discoverer was solemnly recalled by a parade and review of the armies of Free Russia before his statue at the door of the great Cathedral.
CHAPTER IV
BOGDAN HMELNICKY;
THE magic call of free land had slowly repeopled the devastated steppes of the Ukraine following the withdrawal of the Tartar invasion. Little did the first hardy Cossack pioneers, who built their homesteads in this "smiling wilderness" know or care that by this act they subjected themselves to the feudal claims of former Polish and Lithuanian overlords. Too feeble to make good their pretensions against the Tartars, these nobles now sought to exercise their "rights" over the newcomers. But until the middle of the seventeenth century some acknowledged leader had been lacking among the Cossack chieftains. Until this time the very name of Cossack had indicated a "masterless" man, differentiating their race from the Russian peasant class who had long since bartered liberty in exchange for order. In Bogdan Hmelnicky the scattered settlements and clans of the steppes found a hero through whose genius their warEke race was to receive for a brief period the Impulse'ofnanQiiaKy.
The industry and courage of the Cossacks had brought prosperity if not peace to the deserted steppes. The Polish aristocrats of the border, panye and starostsi, were now for the first time safe behind the bulwark of their settlements, and already had begun to look with disfavour on their democratic protectors. Rightly enough, they considered that the "Free People" were dangerous neighbors for their own serfs, meek, priest-ridden folk exploited alike by Jew and Jesuit.