Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Tobolsk (2.)

TOBOLSK, capital of the above government, is situated on the right bank of the Irtish, near its junction with the Toboł. It is 1535 miles from Moscow, and since the alteration of the course of the great Siberian highroad from Tyumeñ to Tomsk it has become an out-of-the-way place, and is no longer either capital of Western Siberia or even an administrative centre for exiles, as it was formerly. Viewed from the Irtish, the town has a picturesque aspect, with its kreml, or stone walls, built on a crag 200 feet high, its twenty-one churches, and several elegant buildings. The kreml, built under Peter I. by Swedish prisoners, in imitation of the kreml of Moscow, is 430 yards long by 200 yards in breadth, and contains two cathedrals erected towards the end of the 17th century. The bell of Uglitch, which rang the alarm when the czarevitch Dmitri was assassinated by order of Boris Godunoff, and therefore had its "ear torn away," and was exiled to Siberia, stands close by. The palace of the governor, the administrative offices, the seminary where the historian of Siberia, Slovtsoff, received his education, the gymnasium where Mendeléeff the chemist was trained, and the Marie school for girls, which now supplies Siberia with so many teachers, are in the upper part of the town, where broad grassy spaces separate the wide streets paved with thick planks. A monument to Yermak, the rebel Cossack who conquered Siberia, stands in a prominent place; and one of the sides of the large square on the crag is occupied by the immense prison, where more than 2000 exiles are gathered during the period of navigation. The lower part of the town stands on a sandy beach of the Irtish, and often suffers from floods. Its sanitary condition is very bad. The merchants of Tobolsk carry on a fairly brisk trade in corn from the south, salt from Semipalatinsk, timber and fish from the lower Ob. The population is almost stationary (20,130 in 1883, as against 15,500 in 1839 and 15,200 in 1772). Some 12 miles to the south east are the ruins of the "fort of Kutchum,"—the seat of the capital of Siberia, Isker, before the Russian conquest.

Tobolsk was founded in 1587 by 500 Cossacks who left Tyumeñ under Tchulkoff, and built a wooden fort at the mouth of the Old Toboł. During the next fifteen years several other forts were erected on the territory now occupied by Tobolsk. The Ostiaks and Samoyedes soon submitted to Russian rule, but the Tartars and Bashkirs made frequent raids, so that a line of forts had to be built in the 17th century from Orenburg to Ishim. In 1752 a new line of forts was erected some 150 miles farther south, and since that time Russian settlers have been able quietly to colonize the most fertile parts to the south of Tobolsk.