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merchant-adventurers and sea-captains, the Russian-American Company, somewhat similar to the East IndiaCompany, spread a new brand of Russian imperialismacross the Bering Strait into Alaska and down theNorth American coast. By 1820, with a Russian outpostalmost as far south as San Francisco and with theRussians active in the Hawaii islands, it seemed almostpossible that the North Pacific might become a Russianlake and North America be divided between the UnitedStates, Great Britain, and Russia. In the face ofAmerican and British pressure, however, the Russiangovernment withdrew to Alaska, found this too costly,and eventually succeeded in selling it to the UnitedStates in 1867.The Russians were too few on their icebound Pacific,and too far from it. Their true line of expansion lay in therich and varied Amur basin, where they had been haltedever since 1689. Thanks to a masterful pro-consul,Muravyov-Amursky, and to the weakness of the Chinesegovernment during 'the Taiping Rebellion,' Russiaacquired in i860 all the northern bank of the Amur andthe coastline down to Vladivostok, a vast new frontierfor the Cossack and peasant pioneer, the miner and thelumberman (see pp. 301-302, 312). Meanwhile Siberiaproper had changed character. Her life no longer centredin the great northern forests, but was intertwined with theblack-earth steppe lands to the south (see pp. 53-56).(iii) The SteppesIt has already been explained (p. 20) that the steppesvary much and fall into three main zones, but theirhistory is so closely interlinked that it is better to treatthem together (see map 4).In the four centuries before about 800 Slav tribespenetrated, without gaining ascendancy in, the westerncorner of the immemorial corridor of grazing andhunting grounds stretching across south Russia, onthe edge of the Greek world, which had for at leasttwo thousand years been dominated by Iranian, Turanian,or other nomad peoples, not all of them savage andc—R.H. «