The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

28GRUSSIA IN EUKOPE.Topography.The most elevated town in the Dnieper basin is Yozma, 830 feet above the sea,on the little river of like name. Like its neighbour Dorogobuj, it is a busy place,close to the ethnical frontier of Great and White Russia. Smolensk, capital of thegovernment of like name, covers a large space on both sides of the Dnieper, at theFig. 142.Smolensk.Scale 1 : 150,000.E.of P. gg°-40' Q9°50't. of:,G 32°icrC. Perronintersection of several routes, and of the Riga and Orol, and Warsaw and Moscowrailways. It is thus a chief commercial centre, and one of the vital strategicalpoints of the empire. As capital of the Krivichi, it was a flourishing place in theninth century, and in the fourteenth was said to have 100,000 inhabitants. But it has-suffered much from sieges, and in 1812 was burnt at the battle which opened to the