rsus
Private Property--Flogging as a Means of Land-registration.

No sooner had the Grand Princes of Moscow thrown off the Mongol yoke
and become independent Tsars of Muscovy than they began that eastward
territorial expansion which has been going on steadily ever since, and
which culminated in the occupation of Talienwan and Port Arthur. Ivan
the Terrible conquered the Khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan (1552-54)
and reduced to nominal subjection the Bashkir and Kirghiz tribes in the
vicinity of the Volga, but he did not thereby establish law and order on
the Steppe. The lawless tribes retained their old pastoral mode of life
and predatory habits, and harassed the Russian agricultural population
of the outlying provinces in the same way as the Red Indians in America
used to harass the white colonists of the Far West. A large section
of the Horde, inhabiting the Crimea and the Steppe to the north of the
Black Sea, escaped annexation by submitting to the Ottoman Turks and
becoming tributaries of the Sultan.

The Turks were at that time a formidable power, with which the Tsars of
Muscovy were too weak to cope successfully, and the Khan of the Crimea
could always, when hard pressed by his northern neighbours, obtain
assistance from Constantinople. This potentate exercised a nominal
authority over the pastoral tribes which roamed on the Steppe between
the Crimea and the Russian frontier, but he had neither the power
nor the desire to control their aggressive tendencies. Their raids in
Russian and Polish territory ensured, among other advantages, a regular
and plentiful supply of slaves, which formed the chief article of export
from Kaffa--the modern Theodosia--and from the other seaports of the
coast.

Of this slave trade, which flourished down to 1783, when the Crimea was
finally conquered and annexed by Russia, we have a graphic account by
an eye-witness, a Lithuanian traveller of the sixteenth century. "Ships
from Asia," he says, "bring arms, clothes, and horses to the Crimean
Tartars, and start on the homeward voyage laden with slaves. It is for
this kind of merchandise alone that the Crimean markets are remarkable.
Slaves may be always had for sale as a pledge or as a present, and every
one rich enough to have a horse deals in them. If a man wishes to buy
clothes, arms, or horses, and does not happen to have at the moment any
slaves, he takes on credit the articles required, and makes a formal
promise to deliver at a