2S2 



RUSSIA IN EUEOPE. 



and beyond it to the Bospliorus. During the incessant wars between the 

 Tatars and Cossacks these shores were the scene of many a hard-fought battle. 



dyeing the sands and waters with blood. 



The Upper Dnieper and the Pripet Basin. 



(White Eussia, Polesya, Volhynia.) 



!N^EARLY all the region in which are collected the farthest head-streams of the 

 Dnieper is now inhabited by White Russians, descendants of the old Krivichi of 



Fig. 140. — The Liman of Tiligul. 

 Scale 1 : 500,000. 



5 Miles, 



Smolensk, and of the Dregovichi of the " quaking mosses." They occupy most of 

 the land between the Soj on the east, and the Pripet on the south-west, as well 

 as the water-partings in the north and west, with the upper valleys of the Niémen 

 and Dvina, forming a total area of about 106,000 square miles, but with a popu- 

 lation of no more than 3,600,000. 



The epithet of " White," applied also to the Muscovite Russians in the sense 

 of " free," at the time when they were rescued from the Tatar yoke, has been the 

 special designation of the Russians of the Tipper Dnieper only since the end of 

 the fourteenth century. At first applied by tlie Poles to all the Lithuanian 



