Permafrost, earth as solid and unmalleable as concrete, makes for poor farmland but is adequate soil for the low-growing shrubs of the tundra. In 1558, Tzar Ivan the Terrible gave the unexplored tundra of Siberia to the merchant Stroganoff family to colonize. The Stroganoffs hired the Cossacks who took over a hundred years to make their way across the furthest eastern end of Siberia to the Pacific.