hear no more of Ugria as a name. The northern part of the great fur-bearing forest in the lower waters of the Obi was now known as Kondia and Obdoria, while the lower forest bordering the steppes was known henceforth as Sibir. In Kondia and Obdoria, inhabited by tribes of Finnish hunters, the authority of the Tsar was more or less respected, but in Sibir for the first time the Slavs came in contact with the Siberian-Tartar khanate, and the conquest of this power by the Russians extended over the greater part of the sixteenth century. After the wane of the Mongol power, this Siberian Tartar khanate seized the opportunity for independence, and the centre of the new political power was established at Sibir, near the junction of the Ishim and Tobol tributaries of the Irtish. Much internal dissension marked the history of the Siberian khanate during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, for those khans who had just become converted to Islam created much discontent by energetically stamping out all relics of the old Finnish shammanism and nature-worship among their subjects. Numerous faction quarrels, feuds and usurpations took place, and finally Khan Kuchum, who is believed to have been a Turk from Central Asia, and descendant of Dengiz Khan, set up his authority at Sibir. Meanwhile Ivan the Terrible was known to be harbouring designs against the khanate, but he was too much engaged at that time in crushing the Mohammedan khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan, nearer home, to take more than an academic interest in far-off Siberia. At last Kazan and Astrakhan fell and the way to Siberia was clear. Ivan sent to Kuchum in 1569 and demanded tribute, but his envoys were plundered and killed. But he was now in a position to
