The fort of Nerchinsk dates from 1654. founded the town four years later; in that year he opened direct communication between the Russian settlements in Transbaikalia and those on the Amur River which had been founded by Cossacks and fur-traders from the Yakutsk region. In 1689 Russia and China signed the Treaty of Nerchinsk, which stopped the farther advance of the Russians into the basin of the Amur for two centuries (see Sino-Russian border conflicts).