(2) A SUMMARY OF RUSSIAN HISTORY UP TO THE MONGOL CONQUEST.

§1. THE OLD TRADITION.

The old Russian Chroniclers from whose copious accounts this abstract has partly been drawn, in right medieval fashion start their tale from the Flood. A few chapters leads them on to the legendary beginnings of Russia, and a version of the first migrations of the Slavs. Originally, so says Nestor, the Slavs dwelt on the Danube in the country of the Hungarians and Bolgars and took their national nomenclatures from the rivers by which they settled; such were the Moravians and the Polc áne from the Morava and the Polota, (an affluent of the. Dviná). '

p. vii

The progenitors of the Slavs were three brothers, Kyĭ, Šček and Khoriv and their sister Lybed †, the eponymous founders of the Polyáne of Kíev, the Čechs and Croatians.

They lived in anarchy without rulers; so they sent an embassy to the Varangians (the Northmen who were then sweeping all of Europe down to Constantinople) in the year 848 in these terms:--"Our country is good and large and fruitful, but there is no good governance in it, because we have no elders; so come and be our princes in our land and rule over us."

Such is the traditional story.