the mountains of Afghanistan, and to what is now Chinese Turkestan, where other political powers, assisted by natural boundaries, have arrested the Slavonic wave. In this process of absorption the khans of Khiva and Kokand, the ameers of Bokhara and other relics of the Tartar power in Turkestan, have now fallen from their high estate and are overshadowed by the two-headed eagle, while the begs of Kashgar and other rulers of the eastern portions of this former Mohammedan Empire became absorbed by the Dragon Throne at Peking.
So it came about that the Slavs began their relations with Siberia among the Ugrian Finnish tribes in the northern forests, and then proceeded to overthrow the Turko-Finnish Mussulman power on the Tobol and to spread south-east and eastward, till they were at last stopped by the power of China. Thus the door for the colonization of the richest lands of Siberia, between the steppe and the forests, lay open, and the subsequent history of Siberia shows how a wedge of Slavonic immigrant colonies has been pushed into this fertile zone. This land, being the best for agriculture was suitable to the sedentary Slavs, and the immigrants who pushed into this agricultural zone effectually separated the Tartar nomads in the steppes bordering Turkestan from the Finnish tribes who retreated to the Northern Siberian forests and to the Altai plateaus. In these so-called Finnish aborigines one still sees the impure relics of an ancient and primitive civilization which existed in Siberia before ever the Slavonic or the Turkish or Mongol races were heard of. But the relics of this older civilization only form a fraction of the present population of Siberia. The last three
