Observation Gallery

I am reasonably sure that this is the only place in the empire where a currier had to dismount and climb into a boat (here to cross the Kerch Strait) in order to continue along his route.

98 out of 228 total farmsteads (43%) are located in the Don Cossack territory and another 40 (18%) are located in adjacent provinces. A thought-provoking statistic, indeed.

As careful as we have been to trace and identify the administrative boundaries depicted on the atlas, at times it is difficult to do either with great confidence. A case in point is that of the oblast' of Bessarabia, in the southwest corner of the…

In the Grand Duchy of Finland, towns tend to be located along the coasts of the Gulf of Finland and the Gulf of Bothnia. Is this indicative of the general pattern of settlement? Does knowing the location of towns explain the geography of Finnish…

One of the questions raised by this map is whether or not the geography of post houses stands in as a map of low population density, or perhaps of negligible state power? After all, the post houses run through the Don Cossack lands, along the…