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* SIBERIA. 133 SIBLEY. open communication by the Amur between Nert- chinsk and the coast and thence with the fortified port of Petropavhjvsk in KanitcluitUa. In May, 1854, he led an expedition down the .SliilUa, and thence down the Amur, which had been so long closeil to Russia. On August 2!)th an English and French squadron of eiyht vessels with 236 guns arrived oil' i'etropavlovsU anil began an attack on September 1st. This attack was devoid of results. It was renewed on the 24th, when tile allies, after silencing some of the bat- teries by their fire, were repulsed in their land assault with heavy loss — about one-third of the 700 men engaged. Knowing that another attack would be made by the allies in greater force, Muraviefi' ordered the abandonment of Petro- pavlovsk early in the spring of 1855 and concen- trated his strength about the mouth of the Amur. Empowered as a plenipotentiary to ar- range a treaty with China, he concluded in ilay, 1858, the Convention of Aigun, which made the Amur the boundary l>etween the two countries, the left bank to belong to Russia, the right as far as the Ussuri to China, and from the latter river to Korea. Xavigation on the frontier rivers was to be open only to Chinese and Russian vessels, and trade on the rivers was to be free. In 1859 Russia secured the country between the Ussuri and the sea and in 18(30 Vladivostok was founded. In 1872 this was made the chief naval station of Russia on the Pacific, in place of Nikolayevsk, at the mouth of the Amur. The earliest means of communication in Siberia were by the rivers. Russian progress across the con- tinent was closely followed by the great Siberian post road, connecting the chain of towns which formed the administrative centres of the prov- inces. Along this road there was a regular postal service, increasing in frequency with the develop- ment of the country. The work of Muravieff, the colonization of the rich country lievond the Ussuri, and the acquisition of an available Pa- cific seaboard, brought out the idea of a great transcontinental railway. In 1878 the Govern- ment took up the matter and by 1884 had built a road from Perm to Tinmen. Other local projects followed and in 1891 the construction of a Trans-Siberian railway was authorized and begun. To keep its hand upon China and hold in check the ambitions of the new .Japan, Russia obtained a foothold in the Liao-tung Peninsula through intervention after the wai- be- tween China and .Japan in 1895. and there estab- lished the strong naval station of Port Arthur and the free port of Dalny. This is connected by the ilanehurian Railway, built under treaty be- tween Russia and China, with the Siberian Rail- way in Trans-Baikalia and with Vladivostok. Until 1900 convicts were exiled to Siberia in great numbers and many barbarities and abuses arose from the system, which was largely miti- gated by a ukase of the Czar which substituted imprisonment for exile except in the case of po- litical ofl'enders, for whom transportatinn was retained, though not necessarily to Siberia. Be- tween 1807 and 1899 it was estimated that 865,- 000 persons had been transported to Siberia. BiBLiOGR.PHY. Reclus. Geofiraphie universelle, vol. v. (Paris, 1880) ; Seebohm. Hiheria in Asia (London, 1882) : Lansdell, Through fUberia (ib., 1882): ladrintzef, Sibirien: Geographi.iche, ethnographische iivrl hlstnrische Stiidien. from the Russian (Jena, 1886) ; Kennan, Siberia and the Exile System (New York, 1891) ; id.. Tent Life in Siberia (ib., 1893) ; De Windt, Si- beria as It Is (London, 1892); id.. The eio Siberia (ib., 1896) ; Price, From the Arclie Oeeon to the Yellow Sea (ib., 1892) ; Keane, ortheni and Eastern Asia (ib., 1890) ; Uedin, Through Asia (ib., 1898) ; Simpson, Side Lights o-n Sibe- ria (Edinburgh, 1898); Legras, En Siberie (Par- is, 1899); Krausse, 7»'u»sia in Asia (London, 1899) ; Colquhoun, Overland to China (New York, 1900); Leroy-Bcaulieu, La reniiralion ile I'Asie-Siherie-Chine-Japon (Paris, 1900) ; Era- ser, The h'eal Siberia (New York. 1902) ; Zabei, Durch die Maiidschurei iind Sibirien i l^eipzig, 1902) ; Norman, All the Riissias (New York, 1902); Wright, Asiatic liussia (ib., 1902); Gerrare, Greater Russia, the Continental Empire of the Old lloWr/ (ill., 1903). SIBERIAN RAILROAD. See Siberia. SIB'LEY, He.nry Hastings (1811-91). An American pioneer, born in Detroit, Jlich. He was only eighteen months old when Detroit was captured by the British, and his family was compelled to tlee to Ohio. In 1828 he became a fur trader and lived for many years at Mackinac and Fort Snelling in the employ of the Ameri- can Fur Company. From 1849 to 1853 he was the delegate to Congress from the Territory of Minnesota, the organization of which at that early date was largely due to his efforts. In 1857 he was a member of the Constitutional Con- vention, and the next year became first Governor of the State. During the Indian outbreak of 1862 he commanded the troops gathered for the defense of the frontier, and at Wood Lake won a decisive victory. For tliis President Lincoln commissioned him a brigadier-general of vohni- teers. The next year he defeated the Sioux in three battles. In 1805 he was brevetted major- general, and in 1866 he was appointed one of the cominission to negotiate treaties with the hostile tribes. Consult Williams, "Henry Hastings Sibley, a Memoir," in the Colleet ions' of the Min- nesota Historical Societi/, vol. vi. (Saint Paul, 1804). SIB'LEY, Henrt Hopkins (1816-86). An American soldier, born in Nachitoches. La. He graduated in 1838 at the United States Jlilitary Academy, and took part in the Seminole War. He fought through the Jlexican War and served in the Utah and Navajo expeditions. He was ]iromoted to be major, but resigned in order to enter the Confederate Army, in which he re- ceived a commission as brigadier-general. Ap- pointed to command the Department of Mexico, he raised a brigade, and in 1862 defeated the forces under Colonel Canby at Valverde. N. il. In 1869-73 he was in the service of the Khedive of Egypt, and constructed river and coast de- fenses. He invented a tent, known by his name. SIBLEY, Hiram (1807-88). An American financier. He was born in North Adams. Mass., was a millwright and machinist for a time at Lima, N. Y.. and in 183S opened a banking hou.se in Rochester. When telegraphy came into prac- tical use, he, in association with Ezra Cornell, consolidated twenty smaller telegraph corpora- tions into the Western Union Telegraph Com- pany. In 1861 he was the moving spirit in the construction of a transcontinental telegraph line for the promotion of which Congress granted for ten years an annual subsidy of $40,000. He next